Revelation : Secrets Unfold
by Certified Whovian
Summary: The Children of Time gather as the Doctor's darkest hour arrives. Old enemies unite to destroy him. And to stop them, a miracle of Time joins the Doctor's allies. But there is something up his sleeve. There is something he is not telling anyone. Can anyone trust him? Will this rescue operation succeed or end in ruin? Fourth and last fic in the Mysteries of Time Series.
1. Prologue

**Author's Notes:**

**1\. (21st January 2015) I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I hate not updating but I've been too occupied. I feel like scratching my nails on a chalkboard...Never mind. I've updated this chapter and will post the next chapter within the next three days. And this is one promise I won't break. I can't promise speedy updates, but I can promise updates. **

**2\. The beginning of the end. It has arrived sooner than I thought. The IB is frustrating, but I am trying to devote as much time as I can to writing. Writing this series has been a great journey for me, as much as I hope it was for you. This is going to be the longest book in the series. So get ready for the last adventure of the series. Get ready for a bumpy ride. And for the first time of the last times, Enjoy!**

**3\. Please read all the previous fics, if possible, in the series before you start this one. It will help you make sense of this story.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Moffat, the BBC, the DW team, and all the fans in the world do. (That was rather solemn, wasn't it?)**

* * *

Clara Oswald sat by the steps of her house.

She couldn't take it anymore.

She needed help.

She dialled in a number into her mobile phone and put it on video call mode.

07700900461…

The phone rang on and on for about a minute or so. The line fell dead. She tried again. And again. Until finally the Doctor picked up the phone.

* * *

"Clara! Ooh, 5 missed calls. Sorry, I was a bit busy retrieving the manual from the supernova I threw it into. Had to be careful not to be seen by my previous incarnation. A good day's work, I must say!"

He stopped at the sound of Clara sobbing.

"Clara…?"

* * *

"I can't take it Doctor. Danny not being here. I've tried to get used to living without him, I truly have, but no matter how hard I try, it doesn't work. It's a hole I can't fill. I just needed somebody to talk to."

The Doctor looked blank for a second. Then his expression changed to one of empathy. He understood but he couldn't find anything of comfort to say. An awkward silence grew between them. Clara finally broke the silence, doing her best to stifle her sobs.

"Where are you?"

The Doctor smiled. He hated it when a companion or former companion got too emotional, and tried as much as he could to make them smile. Some things did pass from one incarnation to another.

"At the Nonazonian Peace Conference. Once the High Lord was arrested, Nonazon fell into a temporary democracy. The Peace Conference is going well, although the Sontarans and the Rutans are still in conflict. At least they've agreed not to involve any other planets in it."

"Is that the room they've given you? It looks like a 5 star hotel room.

Something caught Clara's eye, behind the Doctor, a painting hung on the wall. "Is that the Mona Lisa?!"

The Doctor chuckled. "A clone copy of the original, yes. Every feature, every texture is the same, but it isn't the original. Obtained a snap of the original from da Vinci after saving him from a Sillurian. Weird story…"

He paused. He hated it when things felt incomplete. Like there was something left. It was the only thing he hated more than not saving everybody. Sometimes all you have is bad choices, but you still have to choose…

* * *

"Listen, Clara. There is still a chance of getting him back. It will break several laws of Time, but there is still a chance of-"

The Doctor was cut off by a sound to his left, much like a knock.

"Just a sec, Clara" was all he could say before the door exploded in his face. The phone fell to the floor as he was a flung five feet across the room.

"Doctor!" Clara screamed, in shock from the suddenness.

But the Doctor couldn't hear her.

"Who's that?! Show yourself!"

There was a distinct clapping of metal boots.

"No! What are you doing here? How did you find this place?! No, you can't. You can't!"

Clara watched helplessly as the Doctor got carried away by a horde of Cybermen. She proceeded to shut down the video call, but before she could, a Cybeman's face appeared onto the screen.

"We have traced this call. We give you twenty-four hours, Clara Oswald. Hand yourself over, or you will be deleted..."

* * *

**Please Review, guys, it will help me a lot.**

**P.S. The Doctor will appear in only parts of the story. And in case you didn't notice, we will have more people, other than those mentioned in the summary. ;)**


	2. An Old Friend

**Author's Note: Before my promise, so yay! This is short for a first chapter and is unedited and raw. I want your feedback on how good it is, guys, so please be truthful in your reviews. A million thanks to ****SuOmAlAiNeN92 for his foresight, allowing me to modify the Prologue. Sorry I didn't send this in for reading, but I want your review to be fresh.**

**I've got to learn to shut up. Enjoy!**

**P.S. In case you haven't noticed the Prologue has changed. So please reread it.**

* * *

Clara Oswald ran for her life. As fast as one could with Cybermen with rocket boosters chasing them. That was why a lot of armies recruited a horde of Cybermen, they could easily be upgraded.

She ran as fast as she could, simultaneously removing her mobile phone from her pocket. She phoned up the only people in the world she **knew** she could trust right now.

* * *

Sometime in the 1800s, a lady picked up the house phone. The only phone in existence in that time zone.

"Hello?"

"Jenny, it's me, Clara! I desperately need your help, I'm being chased by Cybermen, and I'm at a phone booth in the middle of nowhere. The Doctor's gone! They've taken him!"

"Slow down, miss. The Doctor's gone? What do you mean, he's 'gone'?"

"They've kidnapped him! He was on a planet called Nonazon, attending a peace conference, when they blew up the door and took him."

Jenny stood stunned. How could the Doctor have been kidnapped? Was Miss Clara playing games? But even if she was, there was still a small possibility that she was actually in trouble.

"We're coming Miss. Keep this line on."

* * *

She explained the situation to Vastra as quickly as she could. Vastra weighed all the possibilities. If they did nothing and for some reason Clara was playing games, then nothing would happen. But if Clara was actually in trouble…

"Fetch the **treasure,** Strax. We're going to need it again" ordered Vastra.

And Strax fetched the treasure carefully, so as to not set it off by accident. A _Vortex Manipulator_. Captain Jack Harkness' _Vortex Manipulator_ to be exact. Anonymously dropped off at their doorstep. Vastra set the _Vortex Manipulator_ to trace the space-time coordinates of the call, as Strax got some weapons ready. She looked back at the rest of the trio.

"Let's go!"

She pressed a button and they were sucked in.

An almost inaudible zap of lightning flashed where they had been standing.

* * *

They arrived at the phone booth 36 seconds after Clara called, when she should have been expecting them, but she was still scared senseless.

"Can you guys not scare me like that?! I'm terrified as it is."

"Sorry Miss" Jenny offered.

"This way…"

She led them out of the remote alley she had been hiding in. Either the Cybermen were boneheads and couldn't find her, or they were hiding somewhere, ready to spring.

She looked at the _Vortex Manipulator_ on Vastra's hand.

"Does that thing have the strength for one more trip right now?"

Vastra nodded. "Probably. Maybe more than that."

"Ok. Let's try the TARDIS."

The room the Doctor had been in looked the same as the one he had been in before. Maybe if she tried Nonazon…she typed in the space-time coordinates under Strax's guidance, but to no avail.

* * *

"You're sure it has enough power to travel?"

Vastra nodded. "More than sure. Maybe something is obstructing our path, stopping us from getting in."

"Then what do we do?"

"There is one thing we can do."

She took out her phone and began dialling, just as the street was filled with the sound of a hundred marching metal boots.

They had been discovered.

* * *

And their enemies had learnt from their mistakes. A Cyberman lifted its hand, pointed its gun at the group, and shot. A kill shot.

But it never reached the tetrad.

The invisible shield of a materialising, silver time machine protected them.

"Welcome aboard my TARDIS" said the voice of a familiar Time Lord.

* * *

**This chapter was probably a bit too rushed, so please forgive me. I hope I can continue writing and updating often. Expect an update soon...**

**Ooh, and before I forget, please review!**

**P.S. Guess who's back?**


	3. New Players and Unlikely Partnerships

**Author's Note: I'm trying my best to get raw, unedited, good stuff, so feel free to criticize so I can improve. I'll try my best to churn out similar, speedy updates. Anyway, enjoy!**

* * *

The group of five sat in the console room of George's TARDIS, which was about one and half times bigger than the Doctor's. Its walls were plain white, with mirrors and computer screens lining them. It was hexagonal in shape, with three floors, the console stretching all the way down. The second floor was lined with bookshelves, much like a mini library. The third was strewn with all kinds of tech, each more bizarre looking than the next.

The console itself was more futuristic than the Doctor's, lined with a v-board hologram screens and numerous sensors. The time rotor was composed of three plain columns glowing a bright yellow, filling the TARDIS with a warm glow. But other than its look, and a bit of its technology, it was pretty much the same.

After the initial haze of confusion and holding her breath, Clara let out a gasp. "Thanks."

George nodded gravely. "We're not out of the frying pan yet. You're going to need to call me up right now from the TARDIS phone and explain the situation to me, otherwise the timeline will disintegrate. Here's what you need to say…"

* * *

After she had finished explaining the situation to a version of George about three and a half minutes behind them, she went and joined the Paternoster Gang on a couch at a corner of the hexagon.

"So what's happening?" George asked, pulling up a chair. "Why are Cybermen after you? Cybermen don't go chasing after people for no reason, somebody set them on your tail. So there has to be a reason or a cause."

Clara winced at the memory, as if all of this had been her fault.

"It's the Doctor. He's been kidnapped."

* * *

George took that in surprisingly good stead. He simply raised an eyebrow and asked her to recount what had happened. So she did. How she'd called up the Doctor to talk about Danny, where the Doctor had been, what had happened. All the while, George sat silently and absolutely still, listening intently.

Once Clara had finished, he looked up. "Is that all? It's crucial that you don't miss a single detail."

Clara nodded.

"Very well. Next stop, your house."

Clara looked at him sharply. "Why my house? I just picked up the call, nothing's happened there."

George began flipping switches on the console. "That's what you think."

* * *

They arrived at her house, only to find a DVD waiting for them there.

Clara looked at George. "You knew this would be here, didn't you?"

He shook his head. "Didn't **know**. Expected it to be here. They were able to trace your call within seconds, so we can assume they have forces ready to deploy. They saw me materialise around you, so I expected the Cybermen to send news back home." He started to walk back to his TARDIS. "As a new player in the game, I have equal rights to know what's going on."

Clara pointed at the Paternosters. "What about them? They're new players in the game too."

George kept moving, not even turning his head. "They'd trust you anyway."

* * *

"I need cold, rock hard evidence to trust anyone" he said as he put the TARDIS in motion once again. "Pass me the DVD."

Clara threw it to him. He pulled up a v-board and inserted the DVD into a slot on its side. An array of Circular Gallifreyan letters appeared as the v-board booted and read the disc. The letters were then replaced by a video screen. George pinched the holographic video screen and threw it at one of the large viewing panes on the TARDIS's wall. "Play."

The video began playing. At first there was nothing. Then the face of one of the most hated species in the universe appeared.

"We have the Doc-tor in our hands" echoed the voice of a Time War Dalek. "This vi-de-o is in-ten-ded to in-form you about the Doc-tor's abduction. Where-ever you are, time-lord, we shall find you."

The viewing screen shut down, taking George's frown with it. "Well, that was cheery. And short. And interesting. We're now officially out of the frying pan. Welcome to the fire."

"Why?" Clara asked. "Daleks and Cybermen can't team up?"

George chuckled. "Not so much as can't, but won't. One of the reasons can be traced back, surprisingly, to Earth. The battle of Canary Wharf. Cybermen don't gel well with Daleks, and Daleks can pretty much annihilate them. It would take a whopper of enthusiasm or incentive for them to even be on the same side."

"So basically, we're screwed. And have no way to find the Doctor."

George smiled as the TARDIS shuddered from an attack. "I didn't say that."

* * *

"They've been tracking you through that mobile phone of yours. Throw it here."

Clara grew flustered and threw it. "Sorry."

"No problem, really. I knew they were doing it." He walked over to a panel and pressed a few buttons. A phone shaped device came up and he holstered the phone.

Clara frowned. "You knew and you did nothing. That's a bit weird."

"They expected me not to realise. The signal is pretty well hidden, so the TARDIS can't track it. But I'm one step ahead of them. Now that they've found us, I can track the receding signal and get their co-ordinates."

He put the shields up and continued to press buttons. He pulled up a v-board and booted it. Similar Circular Gallifreyan letters as before appeared.

"There. The scan's nearly done. Advantage of a more technologically advanced TARDIS, things get done faster."

The v-board beeped as the scan finished.

There was a sharp intake of breath as George read the co-ordinates. He pressed a few more buttons, as the others walked up to him. "That's impossible."

"What's wrong?"

He pulled up the v-board to show them the co-ordinates.

"For one, they've stopped attacking. But this is a more pressing concern." He pressed the buttons to translate the Circular Galllifreyan to English.

The Circular Gallifreyan numbers slowly disappeared, leaving behind the co-ordinates.

**10-0-11-00:02**

* * *

**Thanks for reading, please review guys!**


	4. Return of the Queen

**Author's Note: I'm having a lot of fun writing this story, one because this is the end, and two because this story is more action-like than the others. Sorry for the slight delay. Enjoy!**

**Pre.S. Guess who's back?**

* * *

George flipped the dimensional stabiliser and half a dozen other switches, and his TARDIS began its flight.

"It's fake! It has to be. Gallifrey's lost and there's no way it can be back, but…"

He pushed a button at the doors, causing them to slide open. As the TARDIS materialised at its destination, he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. "…I had to be sure."

He pushed the button once again, closing the door on what had been the previous location of Gallifrey.

* * *

"Argh!" George slammed the TARDIS console in frustration. "They're one step ahead of us. Have been since I made this stupid decision."

"Might I suggest an alternate course of action?" Vastra offered.

George turned his head. "Yeah…might as well, since we have no other lead to go on."

"Instead of looking for **where** they've taken the Doctor, why don't we find out **who** has taken the Doctor?"

"We already know who has taken him. The Daleks and the Cybermen." Clara said, frowning.

"Do we?"

George launched another v-board and loaded the CD. "That is…brilliant."

* * *

Since the CD had already been analysed, the v-board booted faster this time. George pressed down a nearby button on the console. "Convert video into image files. Take image files at every half-second." The v-board whirred as it analysed and churned out the image files. A second and a half later it gave a loud beep, signalling that it was done.

George frowned as he thought of what to do next. "Highlight all individuals in the pictures. Remove all pictures containing duplicates. Then remove all pictures containing **only** individuals of the same species as the previously removed pictures."

The v-board whirred again, analysing as he said. Four seconds later, there was another loud beep. Only one image file remained, with a figure in the background highlighted. "Zoom in on individual highlighted." The v-board returned an enlarged image of a black suited alien with a wrinkled skull-like head.

Clara frowned. "Open Alien Search."

"_Alien Search?_"

"You know, like Google…for finding aliens."

George gave Clara a blank look but pulled up 'Alien Search' nonetheless. Clara took the v-board keyboard and began typing. "The Silence" George read off just before Clara pressed enter.

Another screen replaced it. "Did you mean **'the Silents'**."

"It is really like Google isn't it?"

But George hadn't heard her. "I know them. The Confessional Priests of the Papal Mainframe. Perfectly engineered so that you forget your confession. Well, technically it's suppressed memory now, after Theta's been mucking about."

"But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would they do this? I've met a few, they were mostly harmless. Until they grew Dalek eyestalks from their head."

George frowned. "That's how you retained memory of them. They're supposed to be harmless. The renegade chapter perhaps? Arghh! I need more information."

"What do you mean?"

"This is deeper than a renegade batch of Silents trying to kill the Doctor. The Siege of Trenzalore was unsuccessful but the Timelords didn't come back anyway, so why are they doing this?"

"You were there at the Siege?!"

"Briefly but not recently. About a thousand years ago. Back on Gallifrey."

Jenny, who had been silent up until then, spoke up. "There is the **Professor**. We can ask her."

George looked around, clueless. "Wait. What? Who?"

* * *

"Professor River Song."

"Mr…"

"George."

River frowned.

"What?"

"You're a Time Lord."

"Well, that was quick. How did you figure out?"

"No one but a Time Lord could have tracked that signal back, it would require a device that could process commands travelling back and forth across time and running on the same frequency as the one that I used to connect to the Paternosters the last time. Only sonic screwdrivers can operate on that particular frequency. There are very few, perhaps no other human-looking aliens that carry sonics. Four hundred years in a virtual world changes you, George. You tend to observe more. Why have you called?"

George chuckled.

"What?"

"Your prejudice. All Time Lords except the Doctor are horrible. Well we are doing this to save You-Know-Who."

"Save him?"

"He's been kidnapped."

"Again?"

* * *

"Impossible. Daleks and Cybermen don't work together. Unlesss…"

"Unless they have a common goal that unites them" George finished.

River's image in the 'conference call' flickered. "What's that?" Clara asked.

"Solar flares" River said.

"OK, enough beating around the bush, Mr. George. You're finding it hard to figure out where he is, but I'm sure that if you're given time, you'll figure it out. Why do you need me?"

"Information. This goes deeper than the Silence. I need to know what you've heard. Rumours float across the Library easily, it's a library. Its connection to the actual world is stronger than most hard drives, close enough to a Gallifreyan hard drive. I need to know what information you have, so I can make an accurate calculation of how deep a shit we are in."

River nodded. "Very well. There's not much, but there's one thing that has been floating around the world for a while. Something big is coming. Something that's scaring a lot of races across the universe. Some of the oppressed who cannot fight are being shipped off to peaceful worlds and some of them have come to the Library. Doctor Moon's doing the best he can to keep them safe, but they won't last long."

"Is there nothing more?"

"There's one thing I can tell you about the Kovarian Chapter of the Silents. They are remarkably stubborn and don't take insults easily. So maybe this is just revenge. But something I know for sure, they don't have the manpower, resources or bargaining chips to bring two of the Doctor's worst enemies together."

* * *

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Then why does the conversation feel unfinished?"

River gave a grudging smile. "Nice spotting. I don't trust you enough to let anything more than basic information go. Perhaps it's my prejudice. I am telling you all this because those four are with you, nothing else."

George frowned as River's form flickered once again. "Solar flare interference is getting worse. I have to go."

George nodded, preoccupied as the conference call shut down.

"Something feels wrong…" George pulled up the v-board interface and pressed a menu button on it. He then went around the console, flicking switches.

"What are you doing?" Jenny asked.

"Semi-Existence transit. I am rapidly transiting between two places, undetectable, but getting enough information for calculations."

He reversed all the movements and ran back to the v-board.

"Just like I feared."

"What?"

"The solar flares aren't all solar flares."

"Wait, what?"

"That attack on you wasn't only about you, it's about all of Theta's companions. This is no longer a search and rescue mission. It's now an ambush…"

* * *

**Please review guys! I really need it.**

**P.S. More companions, coming up...**


	5. Those Who Know

**Author's Note: We have reached the first companion, and a place where there is a bit of mild swearing. The rating comes into place here. This is a rather short chapter, and I did the best I could with it. I'm very prone to errors and I'd like all readers to review. Anyway, enough ranting. Enjoy!**

* * *

Donna Noble did not expect the sound of a TARDIS at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. Luckily, whoever was flying it realized that it was 6:00 a.m. in the morning and turned off the engines. She changed quickly and ran out to the backyard to find a group of 5 waiting for her.

"George! Clara! What a surprise! You do realize it is 6 o'clock in the morning?"

"We're here on important business. Best if we discuss it inside…"

* * *

"So, let me get this straight. The spaceman's gotten himself kidnapped?"

George nodded. It was a solemn issue, there was no need for over-elaboration.

"Still don't see why I need to be woken up at 6:00 in the morning. Couldn't you come here later in the day? Or yesterday? Or a week ago?"

"Can't. We were following real time. If we came yesterday, we'd meet a group of Cybermen waiting to tear your house down. Our arrival would set them off."

Donna frowned. "I don't get this situation. I mean, they have the Doctor. Why are they attacking us?"

George flipped a switch, booting up a v-board screen. "Don't know as of yet. Still theorising. But I know this much. They're going to attack all of you. All the companions of the Doctor."

"Is this a hunch, or do you have proof?"

"More like a hunch, but-"

* * *

He was cut off by the sound of a missile zooming across the horizon. "We just got the proof."

He set his TARDIS in motion and switched on the shields. The TARDIS spun across the sky reaching the house just as the missile locked in. He expanded the shield, saving the inhabitants of the house.

"What the hell was that?!" yelled Sylvia Noble as she exited the house.

"Mother!" Donna ran and hugged her as she stood bewildered at the apparent gust of wind that had destroyed her

* * *

"So, you're not the Doctor."

"Nope."

"Ok."

Sylvia looked towards her daughter. "Donna, do you trust him?"

Donna nodded.

George turned back.

"Clara, the spare _Vortex Manipulator_, please."

Clara threw it to him. He caught it, entered the co-ordinates, and handed over to the Nobles. "This will take you to a safe place. When I tell you, press the button." He took out his sonic and apparently sonicked the air.

"What are you doing?" Wilfred asked.

"Creating an interference field. Any attempts to trace this signal will be blocked out. It's time. Say your goodbyes."

He looked back at Donna, who nodded. She then looked at her mother and grandfather, who were now becoming tearful.

"You'll be safe." She didn't know whether she believed that.

"Now!"

There was a zap of lightning as the Nobles disappeared into thin air.

* * *

"What now?" Donna asked, as they returned to George's TARDIS.

"We get away, before those great, hulking, metal bastards return. I hate those guys."

"So this is basically like an ambush? Trap all of us unexpectedly and kill us?"

"That's what I can deduce, yeah. I need more time to think. Time which I don't have."

"You're in a time machine. You have all the time in the universe!" Clara exclaimed.

George chuckled. "Vastra. Would you like to tell them? You noticed the scan, didn't you?"

Vastra nodded. "We don't have all the time in the universe, because they're in a Time Lock that is closing. And a closing Time Lock, or a closed one, can only externally be breached by authorised space travel, so time travel is off the table."

"What about the one on Gallifrey? We time travelled through that."

"Nope. Something let you through. Something powerful enough to breach a Time Lock. It is very, very rare that the systems of a Time Lock fail. Only Time Trails…"

He looked at Jenny, who was staring at him. "Go on."

"What?"

"You have that 'I have a question' look."

Jenny nodded. "How do you even know it is a Time Lock? How did they even make one?"

* * *

George smiled. "Finally, a good question. A receding time trail. It took me a minute but I realised that they had to be hiding somewhere we couldn't reach. So I travelled back to the moment we locked on to the tracing signal, and scanned for a Time Trail. As to how they made a Time Lock, absolutely no clue. Very few races have that knowledge. The Time Lords used to make the best."

"A Time Trail?" Donna asked.

George rolled his eyes. "Am I dealing with idiots here? Uh, no offense. A Time Trail is a trail you leave in time. When you travel through time, like when you travel through a river, you create disturbances in the Time Vortex. I was going to say that earlier. To enter a closing Time Lock by time travelling, you need a Time Trail that matches one that has exited it. No other Time Trail can time travel through the Lock."

* * *

Finally up to speed with the situation, Donna nodded. "So where now? We can't let all the Doctor's companions flounder, can we? We need to save them."

George nodded. "Absolutely!" He started to flip switches like a whirlwind, a lot more switches than normal.

"First stop, London, an alternate universe. 2015. The Powell Estate. Companion: Rose Tyler."

* * *

**P.S. Personally Rose is not my favourite, but she is a brilliant character to write. So everybody get ready for Pete's World. And don't forget to review and offer ideas!**


	6. A Death and an Impossible Rebirth

**Author's Note: Sorry guys, have to take a detour. So don't be mad at me! Enjoy this chapter instead! And please do review.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. It is owned by the BBC. :(**

**Credits for a lot of the info on how the TARDIS works and the science of Doctor Who (Remove the 'dots' and put actual dots instead): The TARDIS DATA CORE (tardis dot wikia dot com) and THE WHONIVERSE (whoniverse dot net).**

**Note: The 'hyper lift' is my own creation and I've not copied it from anywhere. Any resemblance to an actual Doctor Who thing or a lift in another fanfic is purely coincidental.**

* * *

Well, London was **supposed** to be the landing spot. Instead, George's TARDIS suddenly shut down, mid-flight.

"OK, now that's weird." He proceeded to the door button on the console. "Clara, I'm going to open the door, and it's going to be better for all of us if we don't move. The power loss has shut down everything, including the v-boards, so I can't see if the shield's online. Now I want you face your left."

Clara did as he asked.

"Now I'm going to open the door ever so slightly. I need you to look outside with the corner of your eye. **Don't** look directly, or you'll go insane. Ready?"

He pressed a nearby button instead and the door button transformed into a lever. He cranked the lever slightly and the door slid open.

"Can you see anything?"

"Not much, just faint flashes of lightning…Behind us?"

George frowned and closed the door, morphing the lever back into a button. "This doesn't make sense…"

* * *

He turned to other occupants of his TARDIS. "OK, I might just end up blowing us all up, just giving you a heads-up."

He knelt down and started to flip switches on the bottom part of the first floor console. He then took the hyper-lift down to the last floor and flipped switches down there too. He then came back up the hyper-lift with a battery in his hand. He connected it to two terminals on the console and looked back at the others. "The TARDIS didn't lose power. She shut herself down. Something entirely different is at play here." He flipped the dimensional stabiliser off.

Nothing happened.

He then flipped it back.

Nothing happened.

He nodded gravely, and the others trusted him enough, that they didn't ask questions.

"I'm going to have to trip-start the TARDIS. When I tell you, jump!"

"Jump?"

"Yeah, jump. As high as you can."

He pulled another lever at the bottom of the console. "Ready?"

He flipped the dimensional stabiliser one last time and quickly moved his hands away from the console.

"Now!"

The Cloister Bell began to toll as the floor below them disappeared…

* * *

Somehow they landed safely on the floor, George nowhere to be seen. A sound told them he'd fallen to the second floor below them. Thank goodness he hadn't got stuck between…there was no longer a third floor. The TARDIS had reset its interiors.

"Is it over?" Jenny asked.

"No…most definitely not…" George replied.

His TARDIS lurched violently, throwing everybody across the room, almost everyone unscathed. Vastra, not so lucky. She hit her head on the console and toppled.

"Vastra!" Jenny, shaking off her disorientation, ran and caught her before she hit the floor.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." She set Vastra down and turned to George. "What was that?!" she demanded angrily.

George sighed. "An extremely unfortunate set of circumstances. I suppose I'll have to explain"

* * *

"What nearly happened?"

"A _Dimensional Collapse_, because I switched the _RDS_ off. We lost power because the TARDIS got trapped in a fractional dimension between the Vortex and N-Space. Then the Vortex ruptured due to massive time spillage. Then a lot of bad things happened. But there is good and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Is that a question? The bad news, of course" Clara said.

"The bad news is that we are currently spiralling through the Vortex without a destination, and are causing a large enough Time Spillage to cause another Vortex Rupture. If I don't land my TARDIS soon enough, well…you won't like it."

"Then don't tell us. What's the good news?"

"The good news is that the TARDIS has miraculously fixed itself."

The v-board interface suddenly started up. "You and I both know that is impossible" a voice said.

* * *

George swivelled on the spot. "Doctor Song! I wasn't aware you were still with us!" He seemed to be unusually elated.

"Never mind that. It's impossible that your TARDIS's Exo-Plasmic Shell survived isomorphic mass-degeneration and recovered so fast. It would need a century to fix itself, that too once it is repaired."

George started jumping and dancing around the console. "Exactly! Which suggests…"

"…outside interference…That's impossible!"

"Today is a day for impossibilities, my dear Professor! Well now that we've cleared the fact that you've been 'spying' on us the whole time, goodbye Professor Song." He shut down the interface and started dancing once again.

"What's wrong, sir?" Strax asked. "Are you under the influence of a psychotic episode? Do we need grenades?"

"No, you buffoon, I'm happy!"

Clara stared at him blankly. "We're crashing, and you're…happy?"

"No…Ooh, about that."

He jumped up and started turning levers. "The TARDIS can't pinpoint any location except within the same planet it was last on. At most we can set a date." He pulled at the date controls and set the date to the 12th of February 2015. "If we're lucky, she's been listening to us and knows our mission. We'll get to know soon anyway. The Powell Estate is off the list until we find another way there."

The v-board beeped as it pinpointed the location it was crashing on.

"Huh! We're going to need sweaters and jackets."

He pointed the v-board their way and pressed the 'translator' button. The v-board beeped once again, the Circular Gallifreyan letters disappearing.

**Mountain. Earth. Planetary Co-ordinates: 27°59′17″N 86°55′31″E. Commonly known as Mount Everest.**

* * *

**Interesting set of twists. Instead of Rose, we now have a few other companions returning. Don't worry, Rose fans, I'll soon be diverting them towards Pete's World again. Please review, guys!**


	7. Fact and Fiction

**Author's Note: Hello guys! Sorry for the long wait! I broke my laptop screen and was cut off for about two weeks. This chapter's been waiting for a while to be posted (barring last minute changes), so enjoy! As always, credit to the Doctor Who Wikia. The next chapter will be out soon too, so I'll make up for the long wait! (Sorry for all the exclamations.)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. It is the property of the BBC.**

* * *

"Remind me again why we are doing this" Martha Smith-Jones asked her husband. "Why are we following Captain Cheesecake - as you call him - up this apparently non-existent mountain?"

"Cloaked, not non-existent. For the safety of the human race." Captain Jack Harkness corrected, as Mickey walked off to take readings. "And you know perfectly well why you two are on this trip. Spikes never usually occur anyway outside the vicinity of the Rift. I'd usually have Torchwood Three on the job-whatever's left of it- but…Well I left them to take care of the case in London."

Mickey came up running. "Time Spikes to the left side of the summit."

But Jack was concentrating a bit farther into the distance. "Wait. That's Everest, isn't it? I can't make out too much. Looks like it's-"

* * *

"-an avalanche" George said, as he switched on the viewing screens. "The TARDIS didn't have enough time to switch the relative gravity, so we landed with a bit more weight than usual. Let's hope there are no cracks running across Everest."

"Why Everest particularly, out of all the mountains around us?" Donna asked.

"Good question." George opened the door and ran out to take a scan. "It's much more accurate if I take the readings personally" he said, running back inside a minute later. He pushed his Sonic Screwdriver into a slot in the Console. It clicked and the v-board nearest to him automatically started up.

Now that he had switched the language enough times, the TARDIS permanently translated to English. "Hmmm…Scan results indicate Time Spikes occurring in this region of the Earth." He pressed a button on the v-board. "Further scans indicate similar results across the span of the Earth, especially in London. But Time Spikes like these don't usually occur outside the vicinity of the Rift. Looks like someone's been-"

* * *

"-mucking about." Jack turned back to Mickey. "Left side, you say?"

Mickey nodded. "Varying degrees of Spiking. Mostly negative, but no reported disappearances yet. None the local police know about anyway."

"Only this mountain?" Martha asked.

Jack nodded, starting to walk. "Only this one, and maybe others in the vicinity."

"Why don't we use your Vortex Manipulator? You supposedly still have it, after that con you pulled on U.N.I.T."

He turned back. "That was a real Vortex Manipulator I gave them. Anyway, it's too dangerous with Time Spikes going on. Even if I type in the exact co-ordinates, there is a high chance that the Spikes will pull me out of Time Travel and throw me into another Universe. I'd probably survive, but you guys certainly wouldn't. Anyway, it's a pretty small mountain, shouldn't take us-"

* * *

"-more than two hours" George muttered.

Vastra looked at him questioningly. "Shouldn't take us more than two hours for what?"

"Regular old space-travel. Time Travel during Time Spikes is dangerous, you might end up with your essence scattered across the universe, or maybe in another one. Space travel in a ship would be woefully slow too-we'd have to be really careful not to collide with a Spike-but it seems to be our best bet right now…"

Jenny stared at George, who was sitting on a seat next to the console, flipping switches every now and then, preoccupied. "What are you thinking about?" she dared to ask. To her George seemed too mercurial, constantly shifting moods. And that made him dangerous.

He shook his head, coming out of his trance. "Oh…nothing much. Just that there has to be another reason we're here. Yes, the TARDIS anchored on to the Time Spike, but it's not just a machine. Almost every TARDIS that was in existence was a sentient being. She knew something was wrong, she knew we were on a mission. Equally horrible Time Spikes have been occurring across the Earth at irregular intervals. There has to be another reason we landed on Everest…"

* * *

The small team of three scoured the entire summit of the mountain (actually more of a plateau) for clues. An hour later they met at the middle of the summit. "There's only one place we haven't checked" Martha said. "The wreckage. But let me just get this straight. The wreckage was never investigated?"

Jack shook his head. "Happened on 2nd December 1984, the night of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India. All U.N.I.T. teams in the vicinity were sent to Bhopal investigate the possibility of alien interference, and the rest were sent to fill in the paperwork and cover up the area in case aliens really attacked the plant. When U.N.I.T scanned the mountain summit later, they found that the ship was releasing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. The area has been hazardous ever since. But it looks like it must have quieted down. Somebody is using it." He held up his Vortex Manipulator. "This should protect us from any massive dose of radiation, as long as we stay close together."

They made their way across the 'mountain' summit to the wreckage. It didn't take them long to reach there, but what they found at first surprised them.

"Um, Jack…" Mickey called out, moving towards the wreckage, unlike the other two, who were staying away.

"Yeah?"

"0.25 rads. The level of radiation."

"What?!"

Jack checked his own Geiger counter. And it was giving the same result. "It's like somebody scrubbed the atmosphere and the area clean. 0.25 rads. Just a little above average background level radiation. Unbelievable!"

He then looked up from the counter. "You guys realise what that means? Somebody else is here too."

"Aff-ir-ma-tive" said a harsh metallic voice from within the wreckage.

* * *

The trio watched in horror, as Dalek after Dalek poured out of the wreckage.

"This is…horrific" Jack gasped, as they slowly backtracked. "But why? They've been living here for a while and they've done absolutely nothing. Not very Dalek-like actions at all."

Martha was first to hit it. "Um, Jack? There's a force-field behind us."

Jack nodded absentmindedly. "Of course there is."

"But that is not our most pressing concern. Look who's here…"

The Smith-Jones stared as the creator of the Daleks himself came out from the wreckage.

* * *

"You're a hard man to track, Captain Harkness. Isn't often that the Daleks are outsmarted. Now, kneel! Kneel in front of the Dalek race."

The Smith-Jones couple stood their ground. Surprisingly it was Jack who gave way first, bending over. Martha looked in shock at him, only to be met with a wink. She understood. Captain Jack had a plan. And for once she had no arguments. She began to kneel as well, pulling a reluctant Mickey down as well.

"That is where you deserve to be. In reverence to the Dalek race."

Jack fought back his urge to spit.

"Never mind that. You could have 'exterminated' us already. Why are we still alive? Also, not it's every day that the creator of the Daleks himself steps out to do a job. "

Davros laughed. "Well, let's just say that somebody with something of value to us is willing to give it to us, if we bring you to them, preferably alive. They preferred that I command the Daleks, instead of the Supreme Dalek."

"Well, that's good for you then" Jack said, stepping in front of his two friends, protecting them. "Because you'd find me very hard to kill. Let's see how many of you I can take down in ten deaths."

Davros' voice took on a slight edge. "Do not think you are immortal, Captain Harkness. That's what many Time Lords thought before we wiped them out. You may be a Fact, but that does not make you invincible."

"Try me."

Davros laughed again, the harsh metallic tone ringing across the skies. "The Doctor is in our custody. No one is going to come to save you, Children of Time. Not this time."

"See…" said a voice ringing across the heavens. "That's where you're wrong."

Chaos ensued as a TARDIS came hurtling through a rift in the sky.

* * *

A flying TARDIS can do a lot of damage. This one decapitated six Daleks before it landed on the ground. Six people stepped out, each holding an alpha-meson blaster in their hand.

Davros weighed the odds. There were about a hundred Daleks with him right now and they could easily overwhelm nine people. But…

"My TARDIS's shield is protecting us" George taunted, "Not even your combined firepower can breach it easily. Perks of being a Time Lord." He looked at the trio behind him. "Get in, you idiots!"

Jack looked uncertainly at the Time Lord. Could he really trust a stranger?

Davros seemed to sense a victory. This time the Daleks would win. Harkness did not trust this man and that would lead to their downfall. This time the Doctor would finally-

"Do you remember the Nexus Fields?"

Jack first frowned, then smiled. Davros noticed Jack calculating his odds. But he noticed woefully too slow. "No…what?! Stop them! Exterminate them!"

"Ex-ter-mi-nate!"

"Ex-ter-mi-nate!"

Jack stopped halfway to the TARDIS. "You guys go! I'll provide cover fire!" George understood and threw his blaster.

Jack caught it and activated it, simultaneously moving backwards. But the Daleks seemed to sense a lost cause.

"Never mind them" Davros said. "Let us make way to the Charged Vacuum Emboitment."

Jack, completely confused by the sudden retreat, turned and made way for George's TARDIS.

* * *

Of all things, Jack did not expect to find all arms drawn inside the TARDIS. Everybody except George, Clara, and Jenny held a gun; the latter two's guns now in then possession of the Smith-Joneses. He looked at the occupants of the room with his most charming but serious smile. "Guys…all of you, guns down."

Reluctantly, everyone in the room lay down their arms. He looked to George. "Is it serious?"

George nodded. "There's a reason why they were here. It's the same reason we're here too, now that I think of it."

"Who is he, Jack?" Martha asked, raising her blaster again. "Do you trust him?"

Jack nodded. "He's an old friend I had the pleasure to meet in a city called Nexus 5, on a planet called Nexus 5. He's regenerated now, though. I'm quite surprised though. Didn't expect him here."

"Wait…what? You mean he's a…Time Lord?!"

George began to start the TARDIS. "Yes, I'm a Time Lord. And I am trying my best to save another one. You heard Davros. The Doctor's in trouble, and I need you guys to help me save him…"

* * *

**P.S. The chapter title is the same as the title of a future story (in case you didn't notice). I might be changing the names of a few stories but, meh.**

**As always, please go ahead and review! I really need it. Over and out! XD**


	8. The Siege Begins

**Author's Note: I wrote this and the next chapter together, so I decided that one A. Note is enough. This Note will address some issues with the story that have been pointed out.**

**1\. Where's Davros from? Didn't we just see him in um... the previous story?: Yup, you did see him in the previous story. However, this Davros is from a later time.**

**2\. How does Jack know George?: This is a story I've been planning to tell for a while. It's called Fact and Fiction and will begin after I finish this one.**

**This story also serves as a starting point for a new one that will release along side Chapter 10. It's a story set on Pete's World revolving around Pete's World Torchwood. (Working Title: The New Defenders)**

**Anyway enough of rattling about, please enjoy and don't forget to review!**

* * *

George sat on the couch facing Jack, Martha and Mickey as they explained their situation for each other. The others were scattered all across his TARDIS, doing some or the other thing to occupy themselves. He then walked over to a v-board and projected the video once again. Finally he sat back down and sighed.

"That's why I came after you guys."

Mickey frowned. "I don't see what it has to do with us. This is a message to…Ms. Oswald wasn't it?"

"It was, but this goes deeper than that. This involves all of you. All of the Doctor's companions."

Martha nodded. "So where now?"

George looked back at a calculation he'd been running. "We're going to a relatively safe Charged Vacuum Emboitment."

"A what?"

"A Charged Vacuum Emboitment. A CVE, if you prefer. They're structures created by Block Transfer Computations that, which although extremely unstable, allow for passage between universes."

"An alternate universe then?" Mickey asked.

George nodded. "A parallel one. You, Mickey, probably know it better by another name. Pete's World."

* * *

**TWO WEEKS LATER**

Rose Tyler-Smith was feeling overworked. As Chief Field Officer (a post that existed in very few places in very few universes), she controlled the Torchwood field agents and filled in all the necessary paper-work. Not that she didn't go out into the field, though that had taken a lot of pestering. At first, John had been adamantly against it. But eventually…well…she had made him give in.

That's the name he had gone with eventually. He wanted to live as a new man, sever all ties with the man that was the Doctor. Not that he hated the Doctor. But if they were going to share their forever…

"What are you thinking about?" asked her husband from the doorway.

Rose jumped. "Uh…nothing."

John wrinkled his nose. It was his own little action to show mock disappointment.

"Ok, fine. I was thinking about us. And what we've done till now. It just seems like…so much without the TARDIS. But…I'd have it no other way."

John smiled. "That problem will soon be solved, m'lady. Our very own TARDIS is on its way. Very soon, a few more months at most. It can already do basic functions."

He'd been talking about it for a while. A bit of TARDIS coral in a pocket of one of his coats, about 6 years ago. She shuddered in anticipation. Six years they'd been married. Six years.

He seemed to notice. He reached out and brushed a lock of hair and gave her a kiss. Six years, and she was still unprepared sometimes.

"We'll have our own TARDIS later. But now, we have work to do."

She gave him a smile and he winked back. He would have stayed a little longer, but someone chose that exact moment to call him for work. She sighed as she shut the door and got back to work.

* * *

After filling up an acceptance form for some old technology John had reverse-engineered as Chief Scientific Officer (a bit too much like UNIT on the old world), she got a call from the Director.

"Rose, need you here" the Director said. "We have new recruits. Four former army officers."

Rose frowned. Army officers planning to join Torchwood? That was a first. Torchwood was like the exact opposite of an army, completely unregimented. But people changed.

Like typical army agents, they were standing and waiting, completely alert. As she approached they gave her salute. "Ma'am."

"Novices." All aspiring agents were called novices, be they experts or amateurs in their field. She paused as she received a message on her tablet. "Get them here in an hour. Dad."

"Well, we have an hour. I suppose I'd better give you the tour."

* * *

Three of the four planned on being full-time field agents, the fourth a part-time engineer too. And their résumés were good. Better than a lot of the agents they had already recruited. They listened attentively as she took them to the lab building. John just happened to be on the outside. He raised an eye as the soldiers came by. "Soldiers wanting to join Torchwood. That's new. What are your names?" He suddenly realised it was an absurd request from a stranger. "Sorry, I make it my business to know all the names."

Rose read out the names on the résumés. George Moore, Albert Jackson, Michael Jones, and Adeola Jones.

John raised an eyebrow at George's surname. "Irish?" he asked.

George nodded. "And what I can make out from your accent, you're Scottish, aren't you?" "Sir" he added as an afterthought.

John nodded. "But you're older than them. Why do you want to join Torchwood? Them, I can get. Army life too rigorous, need a sort of life where you don't have to harm anyone, well, most of the time."

"Sort of a childhood dream I couldn't fulfil. Until now."

John seemed to accept the explanation. He looked like he wanted to continue the conversation when he was interrupted by a message.

"Sorry guys, I can't talk more. I've got work to do. See you if you are accepted."

* * *

About 50 minutes later, they were outside the Director's office. Rose knocked on the door. "Yes?" came the question from inside.

"The new recruits, Director."

"Ah, send them in."

The first thing that George noticed: the Director's office was the epitome of neatness. Files were neatly stacked in the cupboard, papers were well organised, and everything else was generally very neat. An OCD sufferer's dream. And in the same room he'd find his downfall. A painting hung, where the window would have been, slightly tilted. So much for dreams.

"Ah, the army recruits. Sit down." The tetrad sat in the couch in front of the Director's desk. "So, why have you decided to join Torchwood? Forgive me for the intrusion, but I monitor everything around here with help from John, so I already know yours, Mr. Moore. What about you three?"

George raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"George and I are close childhood friends, so we've pretty much the same ambitions" Jackson said. George looked out of the corner of his eye at Jackson and Jackson shrugged. The Director, seemingly not noticing this exchange, moved on.

"And you two?" Pete said, pointing at the Joneses. You're married and you should be starting to build a family. People with families usually wouldn't even consider a field job in Torchwood."

The Joneses looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

"Well, never mind. It's an intrusion into your personal lives and decisions. It's just that we like to know as much as we can about our recruits, preferably at the start. It does not affect your chance of being accepted in any way."

He picked up their application files and handed them back.

"I've read these and they're pretty good. Your commander also put in a good word for you. Congratulations. Welcome to Torchwood."

* * *

They went outside, unclear of what to do, only to find Rose and John waiting for them. "Congrats, guys. Sorry for this, but we're going to have to separate you for now. You three will have to follow me, Mr. Moore, you're with John. He'll show you to your station."

George gave a wave and started to follow John. They had not gone an entire corridor when George asked, "Do you mind waiting for a minute while I visit the washroom." John shook his head.

Once inside, George ducked into a cubicle. He pressed and activated his ear pod.

"Phase 1 of the Six Month Siege complete. Initiate Phase 2…"


	9. United We Stand

**SIX MONTHS LATER**

John's laugh echoed across the bank of the lake. He couldn't believe he'd known George only six months, it was almost as if he were a friend of his from his Academy days. He snickered silently at the thought.

A shout came from the bank on the other side. Rose was calling them. She, Albert, Michael and Adeola had been playing a quiet game of tennis. The last two weeks or so had been surprisingly quiet, and although the Director had ordered them to remain alert, performance at Torchwood 1 had been slacking for the past week. No one was in the mood for field jobs, at most two left every other day to clear up Weevils in the countryside nearby. John had almost begun to believe that their problems would soon be solved. And very soon Rose and he would have their own TARDIS, and he thought he might consider showing it to their four friends. But under all this he felt strangely on the edge, as if a storm were coming and it would uproot Torchwood One.

* * *

Today's Weevil jobs went to the Joneses. As they were out, George and John decided to play a game of chess while Albert and Rose gave training to a group of new field recruits. Although Albert seemed to know some things, most of the technological bits of the session were left to Rose.

John and George were interrupted about 15 minutes into the game by an engineer who had come to call them. George had turned out to be surprisingly good at reverse-engineering, a job that John had handled till then. He was so good that it wasn't long before he rose up the rungs to the position of Chief Engineering Officer, a job for which Torchwood had been looking for a suitable candidate for the past two years.

"Sorry, chiefs, but the ID card technology is ready to be activated."

The two of them 'hmphed' in annoyance, but nevertheless got up and followed the recruit to the Engineering Quarter.

* * *

They were surprised to find Pete, Jackie, and Tony waiting for them. John raised an eyebrow. "Jackie, Tony, what are you guys doing here?"

Pete smiled. "These ID cards have been handed to all agents and their family members, I guess' it's time my family got them too. John, George, why don't you do the honours?"

John walked over to the activation console and prompted George to follow him. He was surprised to see the slight, momentary hesitation on George's face. Momentary, but noticeable. He looked back at the console as George came over. It looked a lot like a TARDIS console, and of course it would, he'd purposely modelled it that way. He started to flip switches on one side (one for each agent) while George took the other. Finally, John flipped a lever, initialising but not activating the system. The nuclear reactor powering the system switched on with a hum. He glanced at the others in satisfaction, but the satisfaction was soon wiped off his face when the building was struck by lightning.

"What the hell was that?!" Jackie shouted. Tony ran to the window to see while his father pulled out his communicator. "Crow's Nest, do you have a visual?" For a moment there was static on the other side of the line. Then the line crackled. "Negative, Director. There is a smoky haze in the distance, but we do not have a visual on the enemy. I repeat, we do not have a visual. Over."

"How do you know it was an enemy?" his son asked.

"Well, my dear son, lightning doesn't strike from a cloudless sky, does it?"

* * *

George and John ran out to look for the others. They found all four of them in the training room.

"You guys alright?" George asked as he ran in. All of them nodded. Rose turned to John. "Crow's Nest have a visual?" John shook his head. All six of them stood there for a minute in awkward silence until John's communicator crackled. "Sir, Crow's nest has a visual. The cloud is Cybermen, sir. Hordes of flying Cybermen. Being led by large Weevils. Like…huge! Sending you guys the information…now. Agents taking down the Weevils by long-range weaponry...now!"

Rose took out her tablet as she received a live feed of the visual. "They've been upgraded…a lot."

John shuddered. "Rose, those are not Cybus Cybermen. Those are original Mondasian Cybermen. From our universe."

"Your universe?" George asked.

"Forget I said anything."

"But-"

George was interrupted by the communicator crackling again. "Sir, they are now in formation. There's a message for you in the visual."

John looked back to the screen. The visual seemed out of focus, but when it came into focus, the message rang loud and clear. The Cybermen formation spelt 'HAND OVER THE TYLERS'.

* * *

They ran out the room to find mass panic in the halls of Torchwood. Agents ran around, guns in hand, getting ready to fight. The rest of the Tylers were out of the Director's room, now looking for John and Rose. They breathed sighs of relief when they met.

"You guys fine?" Jackie asked. There were nods all around.

"We shall protect Torchwood, Director." a soldier said coming up to them. "You try and figure out an escape route."

"There is one. Behind the painting in my room. It's always open, in case of an emergency, that's why the painting is tilted. I noticed that you noticed. But for that we're going to have to go from outside…"

Outside the four walls of the main Torchwood building, the battle had already begun. Torchwood soldiers were firing at the Cybermen, but mostly to no avail. But surprisingly, the Cybermen weren't reacting at all. If at all, they used a slow killing beam, mostly not even on target, only to scare off the soldiers. They seemed pressed to finish only one job. Capturing the Tylers.

The Tylers ran across the maze that was the Torchwood compound. The Joneses and Albert provided cover fire, while John suddenly ran off, giving no explanation but "I need to get something."

Suddenly, Rose's tablet buzzed. She jumped in surprise, whipping it out to check it. It was a call from the Crow's Nest. She accepted the call.

"Ma'am" an agent said, as John came running back with a key in a hand. "We have a visual, ma'am. It's unclear, but it looks like the Cybermen are simply leading the charge. There's other things approaching Torchwood."

It took them six and a half minutes to reach the building. Rose entered first followed by the rest, Pete going last. Pete authenticated his fingerprint and closed the office side off from the rest of the room. John pointed his sonic and tried to deadlock the room, but by then the Cybermen took control of the Central Unit (where all electronics outside that room could be controlled from). The deadlock failed. "Now what?" Tony asked.

* * *

George looked at John, who nodded. George snuck off and pressed a red button on the activation console. There was a loud bell sound (much like the Cloister bell) and a loud and clear voice rang out, "Self-destruct initiated. Self-destruct in T-minus 2 minutes 30 seconds."

Pete swung around as George pressed another button, a blue button this time. "What are you doing?!" he shouted.

George waited for Pete to calm down before speaking. In the meanwhile he walked to the door to listen for signs.

"It's an incursion protocol that John and I agreed on. In the case of a level Omega incursion, the nuclear reactor underground would be armed and all personnel and family members would be teleported to a safe-house."

"What about us? Why weren't we teleported? Was it because we weren't registered on the activation system?"

"Yup."

"So what's going to happen to us?"

Before George could answer that, the door blew up, throwing him halfway across the room, straight into the activation console. A long gash appeared across his head, blood flowing through.

A voice outside the door answered Pete's question instead.

"YOU WILL BE EX-TER-MI-NA-TED…"

* * *

**Yeah, I know the Daleks are appearing a lot, but chill. We'll see other villains returning too. In the meantime, please review!**


	10. Divided We Fall

**Author's Note: Hey there, guys! I'm back pretty soon for once. As promised Book 1 of the Pete's World series has been released. The series is called The New Defenders and the fic is called The Novices Arrive. I'm going for a break for a while (school trip) so you might not see an update till around the end of the month. Sorry about that. So enjoy, and don't forget to review!**

* * *

"NO! That's impossible! You can't be here, you can't!"

Dalek after Dalek entered the room as the people in the room stood gaping, shell-shocked. A total of 24 Daleks entered. John stepped up in front of the group, even as the others tried to hold him back.

"Whatever argument you have is with me!" he said, spreading out his arms to protect his family. "Leave my family and friends alone."

A bright red Dalek came up to the front. "We've been ordered to capture the Tyler family and paralyse every other being that stands in our way. We are to bring you preferably alive."

But John had stopped listening at the start. "Daleks were ordered?! By whom? The Daleks I knew would never take orders from anyone, except perhaps the Supreme or Davros. And it is neither of them, is it?"

"Self-destruct in T-minus 3 minutes 45 seconds."

Adeola, Michael, and Albert stepped up in front. The Daleks made a sound much like a collective snicker.

"Step out of the way or you will be exterminated!"

* * *

To the Daleks' surprise John started to laugh. "Father-in-law, there's a reason why we have not been teleported. But you know, there's also a reason for why that doesn't matter. Because there's another way out. Because at this exact moment, the longest six months of my life have nearly ended. I suppose I can live with waiting for another month for my dream."

By this time, walking backwards inconspicuously, John had reached the console. He took the key he had been hiding in his pocket…

_"I need to get something."_

…and thrust it into a keyhole made specifically for it.

The Daleks stood in momentary confusion and the Tylers in momentary dread when nothing happened. Then the situation flipped as a sound started to emanate from the space around them, a sound that brought hope. "VWORP! VWORP!"

"My biggest skill has always been talking my way out."

"Stop them!" the Drone Officer Dalek shouted. But it was already too late. John's TARDIS had already started to whisk them off.

* * *

Rose started to laugh in relief. John loved that laugh, but…

"Don't laugh yet, dear. We're not out of the woods yet. This TARDIS can only travel in Space, not in Time. It still needed another week or so to get used to the Time Vortex. Now it's going to take another month. And we don't have enough energy to travel for long."

He looked at the other occupants, including his three friends, who were gawping at the scene around them. "Yes, it's bigger on the inside. Now quit gawping you four, and help me-"

He jumped in alarm. "Idiot!"

"Who?"

"Me!"

He ran to George, who was lying prone, blood still flowing out. "Help me get him to the hospital area!"

He ran into one of the corridors, Rose following him shouting "That's the way to the bed rooms!", only to find herself in the hospital. "The TARDIS changes its own architecture based on the occupants' needs. Didn't I tell you that before, during our classes? Now shush. Let the doctor attend his patient."

* * *

John came out three quarters of an hour later, his face down and unreadable, bringing George in a wheelchair. "How's he?!" Albert asked, concerned.

John looked up. "Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?"

"The good news."

"He'll live."

"And the bad news?"

"He won't live long. Too much blood has already flowed out and caused damage. I managed to get some blood back from the stores I had and fix him up, but the damage is permanent. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. "

Albert nodded. "It's not your fault. If it's anyone's fault, it's-"

The TARDIS shuddered and the Cloister Bell rang.

"-theirs."

* * *

The new TARDIS could only take so much damage. John forced her to land at the safest place she could find, just as the Torchwood Compound blew up. The blast was contained by a shield around the compound, but John suspected some radiation would nevertheless leak out. He looked out to see the situation outside. It was a bay. A bay he knew all too well.

He motioned the others to get out and supported George on his shoulder. By this time George had at least partially regained consciousness. "W-What's going on?" he asked groggily.

John jumped out of his skin, nearly dropping George in surprise. "Uh…" He tried to come up with an explanation that was plausible to George. He decided to not use his brain too much. "I healed you as much as I could, in a bigger on the inside spaceship and we are on the run from Cybermen and upturned alien pepper pots that are one of the most dangerous creatures in the multiverse."

George chuckled.

"What?" John asked.

"Wouldn't be the strangest thing I've heard in this long life. And probably not many more things are going to come, are they? I'm going to die soon."

It was more of a statement than a question. No point lying then…

John nodded.

"Well, maybe I just would like to die quicker. Here they come."

Daleks started to come from the entrance close by, pouring in slowly, starting to surround them. There numbers were drastically lowered, only 7 were left. But seven were enough.

"Let the army guys handle this, eh, boy. Soldiers, Strategist's Defence."

* * *

Strategist's Defence was a formation, much like an arrow, one person pointing front, two back. Except this seemed to be the exact opposite. John frowned, but gave no comment. George tried to get up, but collapsed at the pressure. "The end is near. I can't take any more stress."

Albert looked back at his friend. "Well, then there's no turning back."

They opened fire. John knew, or at least thought, it would make no difference. Except that the people who he had known for six months weren't the people who he thought they were. They managed to destroy three Daleks before the Daleks even closed in. They might have even managed to destroy all of them. Might have, except that Jackie's son chose this exact moment to be a hero like his brother-in-law. He was young, but full of zeal, and he ran straight at the Dalek.

The Drone Officer shot a paralyser before Tony could cover half the distance. "Perhaps we can kill this small human. The Patron shouldn't say anything." The Drone Officer pointed his gunstick at Tony. "You shall die now, human." John ran to jump in between to take the shot. But he was too late. Too slow.

But George wasn't. He somehow moved faster than possible and took the shot in his midsection, but kept standing. "Not a hand on them. Lay a hand on them and the Daleks will not live to see another day."

John started to approach George; the Daleks apparently not noticing him, all their attention on George. "George!" he called out.

"Stay back!" was the shout he got in reply. "Don't come a step nearer."

"How do you know the Daleks? It's important for me to know. The fate of this universe might depend on it."

"I'm sorry Theta" he said, pulling off a key hanging on his neck, glowing with a golden light. "I'm so, so sorry."

The light seemed to disappear as he looked at the Daleks. "Look at this Daleks. You are unlikely to see anything like this again. Send it to your memory banks."

"Duck!" John shouted, just in time.

George started to spin on one foot as his whole body blew up in a blast of golden energy, decapitating all four Daleks at once. He stopped spinning but continued regenerating, almost outshining the evening sun.

John's look turned hard as his closest friend turned into a stranger.

* * *

"Timelord…" John said in an accusatory tone, but as he realised it could probably only be one, his tone softened. "So what's it this time, Doctor? Looks like it's a big reunion, seeing as you've brought along Jack, Mickey, and Martha. Nice to see you three after such a long time. And that's not sarcasm."

George's face fell even more. "I'm not the Doctor."

John took a step back in shock. "W-What? What did you say?" He whipped out his Sonic Screwdriver and started a scan. The results simply confirmed what George had said.

* * *

John lunged at George, even as his family tried to pull him back. "A 100 years, he sat tortured, thinking he was alone. And I can feel that right now! A long century, you bastard! You couldn't even contact him! Probably longer now."

John slowly started to recover from this outburst.

"There's only two reasons I'm forgiving you for now. One: We owe you. Two: You know the Doctor somehow, and so, you know me. We'd have to be pretty close friends for you to remember my Academy name. But if I guess, and I'm usually correct, you can't tell me yours. Am I right?"

"Yes but-"

"Thought so." John paused to look into the distance trying his best to calm himself down completely.

"I think I can guess why you're here too. The Doctor's in trouble, isn't he?"

George nodded, his head still down.

"So take us there then, your TARDIS. You must have one. Very few ships can survive the transit through a CVE. Or am I wrong, and that's not how you came here? That's one of the only ways the Doctor had to leave open."

"Theta, I-"

"Don't try and apologise, George. Not when I'm a hothead. I might do something."

George, for once, did not try to argue his way out, and started to lead the group to his TARDIS, and out of Dårlig Ulv-Stranden.

"Enough has happened outside my control" he muttered. "Too long, I've stayed my hand. No more. No more…"


	11. Come Along, Ponds!

**Author's Note: Back again guys! I know the story is probably progressing a little too slowly in terms of plot, but patience, guys! Only two more rescue chapters (including this one). If you have any questions, please PM me or review them. And speaking of reviewing, please feel free to criticize in your reviews. This chapter is a little on the less edited side so some errors may have creeped in. Now enjoy, and don't forget to review!**

**New type of note I decided to include - Creative License Note: The differentiation between two types of fixed points is my own creation.**

**Disclaimer: Haven't included this for a while but I think it is necessary this time. I do not own Doctor Who. It is a property of the BBC. **

* * *

George's TARDIS transited through the CVE and landed temporarily on an asteroid, in the Doctor's universe, with a Space-Time Rift running through its centre. He set the TARDIS to refuel while the entire party sat waiting for explanations.

He turned around slowly with his hands joint underneath his chin, thinking. John, who had mostly calmed down completely by now, paced around the TARDIS. The video had been replayed for the new occupants, who now looked worriedly at the two Time Lords pacing the TARDIS. Rose had rarely seen John so angry, and Jack-as an off and on companion-had never seen George so out of countenance. Both Time Lords were out of their comfort zone and they didn't like it.

George's TARDIS's system suddenly beeped popping up a message on a v-board. "Extra weight" he read, making a mental note, but seemed to take it as a matter of course and returned to pacing around his TARDIS.

John broke the silence first. "Alright. Let's put aside the fact that you were a bastard. Why do you need us? Why did you travel across a **relatively** stable CVE-most of which would tear you apart in less than a minute-to stay in our universe for six months?"

George gave a hoarse laugh. "To save you, of course! I thought that would be obvious. You know negotiation and war tactics much better than others, maybe you're even one of the best. Tell me what you would do, if you were them, and I didn't listen to you?"

John stayed silent.

George answered for him instead. "You'd attack those close to me. Now do you understand why I came there? That was no random attack from Cybermen and Daleks from your universe. That was a planned attack to capture you and take you away, presumably to where the Doctor is."

He turned around to flip the RDS and set his TARDIS in motion.

"I'm not asking you to help me, or even trust me. I'm asking you to help him. Help the Doctor."

* * *

**Three Days Later**

Everybody had been assigned a room in George's TARDIS, but hardly anyone slept. Everybody in the TARDIS was worried about the Doctor, but were feeling bound, they couldn't do anything. They walked around, had cookies with milk, and goodness knows what else. Anything that would calm them down.

She walked past the couple into the console room, which seemed apparently lively with discussion. Confused, she approached George.

"What's up?"

He looked up from the v-board he'd been working on. "Discussion. On how to find the remaining companions. We already know where Professor Song is, thanks to Donna, but her parents' location is a little harder to figure out."

Clara cursed herself for not paying attention and making them lose valuable time. "I might be able to help with that."

* * *

"…Uh-huh. Ok. Meeting you there."

Clara shut the call. "See, simple."

John guffawed. "Not so simple, Miss Oswald. You might be prepared to use the Telepathic Circuits to get us there, but there's still a time bubble around that place, according to George." He turned to George. "How did that get there?"

"Time Distortions" said a voice from the v-board.

George turned to transfer the call to a larger screen. "Nice to see you again Professor Song."

"Same to you."

"Really?"

"No."

"Thought as much. Now, Time Distortions?"

River nodded. "Created by Weeping Angels to protect their prey. Selectively created, for that matter. No TARDIS can get in. Some other mode of Time Travel maybe, but they're probably keeping an eye on Mum and Dad. Plus their deaths are fixed points in time. So…don't see how even the TARDIS telepathic circuits are going to get you there or even what the point is."

George frowned. "Fixed points? Their deaths are fixed points? Which type?"

River frowned back at him. "What do you mean which type?" she said.

He smiled at finally finding a higher ground. "There are two types. In fact, even many Time Lords forget this because the Laws of Time set down by us don't really differentiate between the types. The first is an Anchored Point, one which is not completely fixed, but changing it will result in disastrous consequences to the Web of Time. The eruption of Vesuvius, for example. The other is a Pedestal Point, one which cannot be changed at all, or Time will begin fall apart and die."

"I've seen the latter" she muttered. "But wow. That was a long lecture."

"I know" George said, not really differentiating between her two statements.

"They're most probably Anchored ones. Should be easy once you get in, shouldn't it? **Once** you get in…"

George nodded, not really listening. "Maybe…"

The screen flickered. "Solar flare interference getting worse" River said. "Sorry guys, got to leave." She shut off the call from the other side.

George furrowed his brow. "Solar flares aren't solar flares…" he mumbled.

* * *

Sometimes people do unexplainable things. George shut down his TARDIS and let them hang there.

John frowned at him. "Why're we stopping?"

George paused midway pushing a lever. He looked back and let the lever fall. "Brute force. We'll try breaking through with brute force." He walked up to a v-board and opened a side menu. He set the co-ordinates for 1940s Manhattan and opened the Time Vortex in front of them. The TARDIS seemed to levitate. "Everyone ready?"

For a second his TARDIS seemed to whirl on the spot, before the interior stabilised. Then it used the same momentum and started to move through the Vortex without dematerialising, speeding towards the destination, faster than light. Yet again, **only** for a second, the outside seemed to affect them.

Clara put her hand up. George looked at her. "This isn't a classroom, you needn't put your hand up before asking." John snickered, causing Clara to flush.

"Why is it affecting us only for a moment? Shouldn't it either keep affecting us, or not affect us at all?"

George mused at it. "Probably because we're still stabilising into this universe."

"Never mind that!" John shouted. "Watch out!"

George's TARDIS crashed into a solid wall of temporal energy, throwing everybody off balance.

"Well…not brute force then…"

* * *

Amy and Rory Williams sat on their bed, making a plan. They had been planning to try and get out for a while, this just gave them an excuse. Better to live their entire life on their own terms rather on the terms of the Angels. Speaking of them, The Weeping Angels hadn't evem bothered with keeping guards. They couldn't afford to leave Angels around, with their numbers dwindling. The Doctor's paradox had wiped out most of them, except those not within the Time Zone (probably feasting instead).

The two of them could probably get out of the room, maybe even out of the building, but the Angels were not stupid. They had at least a dozen Angels waiting on the outside ready to kill them faster than they were already dying. Not a very bright prospect at all.

But their assumptions were proven right. Nobody stopped them until they were down to the ground floor. They stopped at the staircase, where Rory offered to look for threats. Amy tried to stop him, but he insisted. "It's the only way. This way at least one of us gets out."

Amy looked at him, tearing up. "There isn't much point. I wouldn't be able to live without you. So you're not going alone." Rory nodded, and they made their way across to the door. They looked at each other for a moment and nodded. They pushed open the door…

* * *

…only to find complete chaos.

Lasers from alpha-meson blasters seemed to be covering most of the vicinity. "Amy!" She swivelled around to find Clara, the Doctor's new companion, running towards her. "Clara! What the hell are you doing here! I thought you were joking. The Doctor said it was impossible to get here."

A strange man came running up. "Haha, really funny. Now get in!" He pointed towards a huge cylindrical structure taking up half the street. He turned back towards the other six people shooting. "Everybody! Back in. And take those two with you! Jack, cover fire with me!"

That's when everything went wrong. The lights began to flicker…li

Jack and George stopped dead. The Angels seemed to struggle to do something, until one of them somehow began to speak. "You are surrounded. Give yourselves up, and you won't be harmed."

George didn't miss a beat. "You managed to get something out of the Total Event Collapse, didn't you? Or maybe you were given it. Angel Bob, I presume?" The silence seemed to confirm his hypothesis.

"Well, Angel Bob. If you knew we were coming, you know me. And let me tell you this. I am not the Doctor."

The TARDIS behind him seemed to morph, almost as if it were a mirage appearing on a desert landscape. It shimmered, and the shimmer seemed to light everything up, until the TARDIS transformed into a call box. A Police Public Call Box from the 1950s.

He smirked. "Lights!"

The lights on top of the box switched on, outshining and immediately obscuring every star in the sky. George turned back at the Angels, still smirking, as Jack fiddled with his Vortex Manipulator. "And, unlike the Doctor, I almost always have a plan." They disappeared with a zap of lightning as his TARDIS began to dematerialize, leaving the Angels standing and staring at them, contemplating their next move. The Patron would not be happy…


	12. Return to the Library

**Author's Note (19th May 2015): It's been a long time. Too long in fact. If I had a choice I'd have posted these two chapters a while ago, probably last Monday. But my school's wifi has been on the fritz. So here are two chapters, late but still fresh off the pan. Enjoy!**

**P.S. SuOmAlAiNeN92, these are the last two recruiting chapters, after which the story truly starts (two chapters only because it seemed too large to me to leave as one chapter).**

* * *

"All of us?" Amy asked. "All the Doctor's companions?"

George looked up from the console, puzzling out something. "Soon, all of you. All of you whom he has met after the Time War anyway. Except that one guy. Whatsisname?"

Amy shivered. "Adam. Yeah. We don't talk about Adam. " She frowned. "Post Time War companions only? Why?"

George shrugged. "Don't know. Hate not knowing. Anyway, doesn't matter. We're here."

"Where?"

"The Library. To rescue your daughter."

* * *

They nearly walked onto a star.

"Back! Back! Everyone back!" George shouted.

He immediately set his TARDIS in motion, albeit not through the Vortex. It drifted slowly towards the planets that were in motion around the star.

Everyone inside was clearly shaken. "Solar flares?" John asked, finally breaking the silence.

George nodded. "Screwed up navigation. And thank goodness for that." He stopped the TARDIS mid-flight, switching on the screens. "These are the scans that turned up a while ago, now updated."

The viewing screens showed the star system outside. Nothing seemed wrong. "Now once we switch on an infrared sweep…" The scan immediately lit up with a dozen or so shapes reminiscent of spaceships they'd encountered before.

"Daleks? Aren't they getting about a bit too much?" Donna asked.

"Dalek spaceships" George corrected. "With probably relatively few Daleks on them."

John came up with a more worrying question. "Why not just blow the Library up? Dalek gunships could easily destroy it."

George smiled. "The last gift of the Doctor. He might not be able to change his timeline in this case, but he left River a last gift. He recreated the TARDIS shields around the Library. A lot harder for Dalek gunships to blow through that."

His smile seemed almost reminiscent of…John dismissed the thought as quickly as it appeared.

* * *

The TARDIS, now invisible, slowly drifted—nothing more—towards the planet that held the Library.

"The shields will allow us in?" John asked.

George nodded. "It's just there to prevent any attacks on the Library. Any ship can come in, but every ship is scanned. That is why…" He flipped a switch, restoring the outer shell he used a while ago. "…my TARDIS now looks like the Doctor's. Hopefully the defence systems don't shoot us down."

Their arrival on the planet a minute later erased any doubt.

George walked onto the planet leading the others out. "This is where everything starts to get dangerous…"

* * *

He ushered Donna to take the lead, surprising her.

"Me?!"

"Yes, you. You're the only one of us who's been here before sightseeing. Amy was here too but she was too busy being chased by books. You know more about the place than any of us."

Hard to argue with sense.

Surprisingly, she remembered the path well enough. She took them through the main entrance and into the long hallway where she'd first learnt about…She stopped dead as a light far along the hallway seemed to switch off on its own.

George was smiling at her realization. "Now you know why the Daleks don't just land and annihilate us."

No one else knew, so Amy voiced their question. "Why?"

"The Vashta Nerada…" Donna answered, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

"The What?"

George, who was apparently fiddling with his Sonic Screwdriver, looked up. "The Vashta Nerada. Probably one of the deadliest races in the universe. Every other one of your enemies have weaknesses. Daleks, shoot them in the eyestalk. Sontarans, the vent in the neck. Cybermen, their weakness to logic, gold, and well…a lot of other stuff. But Vashta Nerada? All you can do is run. They're micro-parasites that will strip you the bone. No matter what you're wearing. Be it nothing, or a Dalekenium casing, you're dead as a dodo."

"So what do we do?"

"Stay out of the dark, most importantly, stay out of the shadows. Once you have two shadows, I can't help you unless they willingly give you up. If all goes well, nothing should happen."

That was when the lights started flickering.

"Run!" George shouted. "Run!"

* * *

Running seemed to do them little good. The darkness seemed to be following them around. They used the gravity platform to move to different floors, but that didn't seem to help them much either. The Vashta Nerada followed them there too. It's like they knew exactly where the group would be going.

"This is useless!" Martha gasped, exhausted. "They'll keep following us. It's like they've been without food for a few years!"

"They probably have…" replied George.

They ran on for another five minutes when they noticed something ahead. There was no light. They were back exactly in the same spot they had started from, cornered.

"Now what?" asked a panicking Donna.

"Ummm…I don't know" came the rather unhelpful reply from George.

"I could let them eat me…" Jack suggested.

"No, they won't fall for that, Jack. They'll devour us all."

"Then what do we do?"

"I DON'T KNOW! No, wait. All of you, think. When we came in, was there a computer anywhere immediately next to us."

"Yeah!" Donna said immediately. "There was one right behind us, in fact, and another one somewhere in the shop nearby."

George turned around to face the Vashta Nerada. "Ok, I have to do this on a hunch. If I can access the mainframe, I might just be able to do this."

He pointed his sonic screwdriver into the dark. All of a sudden, a light blipped on and the room went dark, except for the parts the Vashta Nerada had been in.

"George, what are you doing? They're coming."

"Wait for it. Jack hand me your Vortex Manipulator."

"I don't have it."

"Yes, you do. I saw you swipe it from me."

"Fine."

"Good. Now everyone, hold hands."

"What?"

"JUST DO IT!"

George sonicked the Vortex Manipulator, just as the Vashta Nerada leapt on to them.

* * *

**Please review guys! It'll help a lot!**


	13. Necessary Evils

"Ouch!" Rory yelped, just as they landed in another part of the Library. "They scratched at me."

"We just barely escaped."

Donna frowned. "I know this room. I know it but I haven't seen it. Wait! This is…"

She turned around to find herself face to face with a familiar Node. CAL's Node.

"Hello there" she said weakly.

The node suddenly activated. "Wha-What?"

Everyone walked over to where she was. Donna smiled.

"CAL, can you hear me? It's me, Donna. Do you remember me?"

"Donna Noble! Yes, of course I remember you. What are you doing in the Library? I thought you and the Doctor left a few years ago. How are you back?"

"I'm back for some work. I need your help."

* * *

Professor River Song was tending to her children when the doorbell rang. Well, her imaginary children. No matter how much she tried to shake out that thought it wouldn't go. She couldn't give up her life of adventure with the Doctor, not after having seen him again a year and a half ago. But she had to. She had no other choice.

The doorbell rang again and she ran to answer it. She was not surprised to find Doctor Moon standing outside. Doctor Moon often visited to check up on them. They'd managed to find a way to mirror the world exactly how it was in the current era, so reflections of her old friends turned up at her doorstep sometimes. Sometimes she forgot she lived in a virtual world.

"Hello, Doctor Moon. Checking up on us?"

He shook his head. "No. There's a call from the Library. For you."

* * *

River Song did not expect everyone to have popped up at the Library. "Wait. What the hell? All of you? Mum, Dad, you too? George, what the hell are they doing here?! You realise you've violated the Laws of Time by bringing my parents here!"

"I have a daily quota of two violations before tea."

"This isn't funny."

"I agree. That's why we should come to the point."

River's face became sullen. It was rare for her to be beaten in an argument when she was right. And she was. But George was right too. There were more pressing matters.

"Ok, then. Why are you here? For more information?"

"Nope, to get you out."

"What?! You can't do that!"

George smiled and pointed towards Jack, who was settling into the very command chair River had sat in. "Already am."

"NO!"

"You won't stop me."

"And why won't I?"

"Because it's the only was the Library will survive."

"The Library had TARDIS level protection. Nothing gets through a TARDIS shield."

"It's a little known fact, but every TARDIS shield has a weak spot. If enough ships shoot, the shield will break. Now do you understand? With the amount of ships out there, they could bring it down easily and be home in time for tea."

"I still won't let you kill someone for it. Or did you forget that you need to?"

George smiled. "No, but while I kept you talking, my friend Jack here is nearly done with the process."

"What?! No! You can't!"

"I already am. In fact, I'll bring back all of you. I'm sorry for what you're about to feel, but it's the only way to get you out."

He switched off the call but not the video source, so that River could see but not communicate.

"Self-destruct sequence is online for T-minus 2 minutes" John informed.

"Good, now hand the v-board to me."

George took the v-board and sonicked it, changing the language interface to Gallifreyan.

"Professor Song thinks we're going to bring her here, so she'll try to code against us. Instead, we'll code around her and…", he tossed his TARDIS key to John, "…we'll bring her to my TARDIS."

John began fiddling with the key until he found a button. George's TARDIS began materialising around them.

George smiled. "The advantage of having an advanced TARDIS..."

* * *

In CAL's world, River had decided to meet up with her team. She had started to code against the destruct sequence and was waiting for them, when she felt an odd sense of foreboding. Her stomach started to flutter. Not from fear, because she wasn't scared. Then what could it be? She decided to move to the meeting point and began preparations to leave. But before she could, the flutter grew again, accompanied by a sting in her arm. She slapped it and rubbed the spot. She remembered that she had to set the computer to implement the code. She moved to do so but felt another sting. And another. And another. She slapped the spots one after another but the frequency started to grow. Finally the pain grew beyond tolerance and River Song began to scream as she was dissembled into strings of information.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Amy asked quietly, back in the TARDIS.

George turned around. "Bringing your daughter back from the dead. I thought I made that obvious."

"Will it hurt her?"

"No. It shouldn't, provided everything goes right."

Amy knew she should feel happy but something was nagging her. "What if something goes wrong on the other end? What if Captain Harkness dies?"

"I told you, he's practically immortal."

"What if something goes wrong?"

"It's necessary to do this, whether or not you think it is. No offense, but if something goes wrong with Jack and he dies, and if my suspicions are correct, we'll have a helluva lot more to worry about then a person dying. Now, the countdown is going to begin. John, prep the teleporter. And when I say, only when I say, reverse the polarity."

George silently counted down the seconds left on the clock.

"10."

"9."

"8."

"7."

"6."

"5."

"4."

"3."

"2."

"1."

"Now!"

The teleporter buzzed to life, but something seemed wrong. The polarity reversed, but nothing was happening.

"The information, it isn't entering. Oh, she stopped the self-destruct. Thankfully, she and the others are still **complete** strings of information."

He picked up a communicator. "Mr. Not-Dead Harkness. Going to remote destruct the Library. Only follow your part when I say so."

"3."

"2."

"1."

"Again!"

That was when it all went wrong…

* * *

**Insert review here, please.**


	14. A Why, a Who, and a What The F-

**Author's Note (1st June 2015): Chapter fresh off the pan, guys! Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one. Well, this is where the story truly begins. No more rescuing, no more running about, now we truly delve in. So I decided to add in a new dynamic. Let's see how it turns out...**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Unfortunately.**

* * *

"Quick! She's going into cardiac arrest!"

"I'm going as fast as I can! Was this the problem you mentioned? What about the others?"

"The others are fine. The problem is that she's a child of a TARDIS. For some reason her body can't handle the stress of **reincarnation**."

"Is she going to be alright?"

"I don't know…"

* * *

Amy and George rushed the almost lifeless body of River Song to the infirmary and lay her down on a bed.

"What do we do?" Amy asked, putting on surgical gloves.

George looked back. "You will do nothing. You're going back to the console room and sending Martha and John here with medical supplies from the supply room.

"But-"

"No buts. Do as you're told."

* * *

George came out three hours later, when everyone except Amy and Rory had fallen asleep.

"How's she?"

George smiled. "Better than most of us. Her being a child of a TARDIS actually helped, instead of being an obstacle."

"There's no need to lie, George."

They turned around to find River walking into the console room. "He fixed me up pretty well. Must have been a surgeon on Gallifrey. Being a surgeon, he's probably used to saving lives." Surprisingly, rather than admiring, her tone seemed accusatory. Until of course, Jack walked in as well.

"Wait, what? How are you still alive?!"

George snickered. "Professor River Song, this is Captain Jack Harkness."

"Oh…"

* * *

They sat on the various sofas lying across the console room, each with a cup of tea in their hands.

River sipped slowly at her tea. "So, what now? You've recruited all of us."

"Rescued, not recruited. They're trying their best to kill you. One of my missions is to make sure they don't."

"Ok. What about that Post-Time War bit? You still haven't explained that."

"I don't know. Could be any one of a million reasons. Doesn't help to think about it."

"But you do have an idea?"

George nodded. "I've eliminated all but twenty. Now it's just a matter of figuring out if it's one of those twenty."

"Let's hope we find out before they kill us."

"They are not going to kill us. Don't be so pessimistic, it'll affect team morale."

"Huh."

George turned to face Clara. "What?"

"That sounded like something the Doctor once said to me. Where did you hear that from?"

"Made it up right now."

* * *

River was surprised to find the console room being destroyed.

She'd seemed to have developed insomnia after her 're-incarnation' (probably a temporary side effect) and had decided to go and have a midnight snack to calm her nerves. A plate of cookies and a glass of milk should be good enough. She obviously didn't expect George to be awake and shooting at his TARDIS console. She might not even have noticed, except that he shot at the wall right next to her.

She also did not expect him to look horrified.

"I am so sorry." He threw the gun backwards into a box lying under the first floor console.

"Nerves?" River asked.

George nodded. "Frustrated at not having a course of action. I've rescued you all, so now what? We could look at places where the Doctor had visited recently. What would we find? Nothing. I've run countless such simulations in mind and I keep coming up with the same answer. Nothing! Nothing! NOTHING!"

River jumped at the last. Something about the aura George exuded was terrifying. His demeanor was calm and trustworthy, but suspicious and volatile at the same time. Like fire and ice co-existing at the same time.

George noticed this train of thought. "Sorry again. It's just that I feel so angry."

He noticed her looking at the now damaged console. "TARDIS Architectural Reconfiguration System should fix it right back up.

River thought carefully about what to say. But only one question was on her mind. "Why do you care?"

"Sorry?"

"Why do you care what happens to him? I mean, not all Time Lords are bad, they even gave him a new regeneration cycle. So it wouldn't be out of place. But you care as if your life depended on it. Almost like, 'If I fail, I'll never forgive myself'. Like a movie. Why?"

George smiled sadly. "A promise…" he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I made him a promise and now it's breaking apart faster than I can put it all back together. And I'm scared that I won't be there to help him."

"Hell of a friend you'd have been back on Gallifrey!"

George looked blankly at her for a moment, before they both started laughing. And the now happy smile didn't leave his face. The promise wasn't broken yet. Hope was still alive.

* * *

The next day was a mess. George had labelled it 'Get Leave Day' for them. Basically, he was sending everyone with jobs back to their offices. John was busy with the Tylers in the secondary console room sending a message through to the other universe. Donna had been dropped off to get leave. Martha and Mickey were off with Jack helping Torchwood to ease into their temporary loss of 'leader'. Amy and Rory were asleep. River's friends had already been informed, but she was nevertheless in a hurry to get back and personally inform them, even after everyone constantly reminding her not to stress herself.

For George, it was 'Get Grocery Day', as John found out. He had re-entered the console room and was helping George fly the TARDIS.

George suddenly stole a glance at his watch. "Do you mind taking this up for a while, John? Some of the TARDIS systems need a little fix, so unfortunately we have no grocery."

John shrugged. He'd rarely got his hands on a TARDIS of a higher type. It'd be fun trying to figure out all the controls. Maybe-

His train of thought was interrupted as River came crashing through the door and took George down.

"Sorry, sorry…" she said absentmindedly.

George just sighed. "Drop her off after me and set Protocol 7. Should bring the TARDIS to the store automatically after an hour."

But as John dropped River off, the telephone rang. "Who's this?"

"It's me, River. Bring the TARDIS back around before you dematerialise completely."

* * *

"I thought as much…" John mused as River re-entered the TARDIS.

"What?"

"That crash into him was deliberate."

River smiled and fished out George's Sonic Screwdriver out of her pocket.

"Why, though?"

"Now we can know who he really is."

"Oh…"

* * *

No easy job to hack into a TARDIS, but River had been taught by the best. Why the Doctor had decided to teach her that, she had no idea.

"Plug in the sonic to the charger slot; and this being a newer type, the screen should show a message confirming the origin of the Sonic."

John looked at the screen to confirm. "Yup. Though remind me again, why is it you who is doing the hacking, and not me?"

"Just because."

John chuckled. He could see why the Doctor had married her.

River began hacking in. Surprisingly, this was one of the easier hacks, as it didn't involve identification. The Sonic Screwdriver was identification enough. Only thing to thank the gods about was that the core system of the TARDIS hadn't changed all these years. Still, it was a complicated hack and took her nearly 40 minutes to complete it. The TARDIS began to dematerialise just as she finished.

"There, done!" She stepped back from the console.

"That easy?"

"That was not easy!"

"Easier than normal."

"Shush, it's booting!"

The v-board had weird little Circular Gallifreyan letters spinning around. Complete gibberish, just there to look cool. Much like the façade that George wore.

"That's impossible. I know that name…" River muttered, as John's mouth just hung open from pure shock.

"Now you know why I am doing this…" came George's voice from the TARDIS doors.

* * *

**Now three people know who George is (including Jack). How long can he keep up this ****façade? Find out next time on Revelation: Secrets Unfold!**

**DOOWEEOOOOOOOOOOO!**

**Sorry.**

**Please review.**

**BYE!**


	15. Everything Changes

**Author's Note: Sorry for about such a long break from writing. I blame myself and the fact that my laptop nearly broke into two pieces. After I got it fixed, it turned out that there had been some sort of a mistake and my wifi adapter stopped connecting to my wifi. Anyway, now it's fixed, and I hope to get you guys a lot of speedy updates. Now we are on the path of finding the Doctor. Let's hope there's no trouble along the way. Yeah right.**

**Anyway, ENJOY!**

* * *

**Three Days Later**

"River, we have to talk now."

River turned to face Amy. "Mother?"

"Now, my daughter."

Amy played the 'daughter' card occasionally, a sort of no-nonsense tolerated sign.

"Fine…" River sighed.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Before Amy could speak, another voice came from behind her. "You know you do."

Amy turned to see Rose enter, John simultaneously entering from the other side. John stopped dead at the scene in front of him.

Rose looked to River. "I've tried questioning John over the same thing over and over again. He absolutely refuses to give any sort of an answer. Both of you **hated** George. Why the sudden change?"

"Because they now know who I am…" came the answer from the corridor John had just entered from. George entered the room with a grave face. "They know who I am. But that doesn't matter. We've reached the crime scene."

* * *

"Put the teleporter pods there…" George said, pointing out an empty space to the men helping him. He turned to the High General. "Thank you, my lord, for your cooperation."

"But of course, Master George. Anything to help the Doctor. We were nearly ravaged by High Lord Snigglestrahbert, but you and the Doctor saved us from his idiocy."

"It really was nothing."

"Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Never mind, the Protector is waiting for you."

"The Protector?" Donna whispered from behind.

Donna, Clara, and George were the only ones who had come out of the TARDIS. He'd told the rest to remain inside, in case someone decided to try his luck with George's TARDIS. The truth was, half of the TARDIS occupants weren't even awake.

George turned his neck very slightly to talk, so as to not be disrespectful to either party. "Ever since Nonazon fell into temporary democracy, people have been reluctant to accept it. To promote peace and not have a riot on their hands, the War Cabinet decided to elect a 'Protector'; not a High Lord, but still a figure of extreme power."

"So, do we know this guy?"

George nodded. "A guy we were told was dead. Former General Hade."

* * *

"Two hours have passed. This is getting irritating."

Clara and Donna had been sitting outside the Protector's personal meeting room for two hours, while George and Hade talked like old friends. Just as they were about to leave and return to the TARDIS, as they had planned, George and Hade exited the room.

"A pleasure, Master George."

"Likewise, Protector Hade."

Hade left with his soldier retinue, walking down the hallway to the War Room, while George came and re-joined his party.

"Well?" Donna asked.

"Well, what?"

"What were you doing there for two hours?"

"Oh, that's the amount of time it takes to prep the teleporters, so I decided to have a chat. Plus, I needed some help from him…never mind that. We need to get back before John initiates the process. Come on!"

* * *

John turned around to the sound of the door opening. "We ready?"

George pushed a button next to the door, closing it. "We are."

"Ok, then. Initiating Teleport Influx Transfer."

He pressed a key on the Gallifreyan v-board to confirm the command sequence. The Time Rotors began to whirr, but the usual frequency of the TARDIS's noise slowly changed. The pitch of iconic "Vworp! Vworp!" grew so high that all its occupants had to cover their ears. Finally there was a beep from the v-board, as the Time Rotor slowed down.

"Influx complete."

"Influx of what?" Donna asked.

George turned towards the group, simultaneously starting the TARDIS. "The crime scene. I recreated the entire room in the TARDIS-an exact facsimile of it. Now we can observe it properly, while also not inconveniencing Nonazon with a non-existent room in Zone 9."

* * *

It was a pretty normal room, with nothing out of the ordinary. But this was the room the Doctor had been kidnapped from. That definitely took the normal out of it. Come whatever may, Amy couldn't get one thing. Why were they looking at the room in the first place? She voiced it out to George.

"Battle Tactics 101" he replied, looking around for things that were out of place. In his hand he had a picture he had extrapolated from the call the Doctor had had with Clara. He turned back to Amy. "Class we used to have in the Academy back on Gallifrey. Taught us a variety of battle techniques and tactics, but also prepared us for self defense. Why a race that had taken on a non-interference policy needed a battle tactics class I don't know. But it taught us enough."

"Anyway, one of the classes discussed kidnapping. First rule-ask for a way out. I mean, not literally of course. Ask for a small thing that you can use to facilitate your escape and they won't object to. In this case they were most likely not to object, because they're going to kill him anyway. A lot like a last wish at an execution. So, question is, what did the Doctor ask for?"

All the companions began thinking. But John already had an answer. "I'm the closest person we have to the Doctor right now, a metacrisis clone. I hate calling myself that, but it's true. And if **I** was in this situation, I would hide a message. Which means I would ask for permission for another call."

George couldn't help smiling. "Right. Logical thing to do. You leave something else, they'll probably detect it."

To Martha, there was a more pressing question. "Why didn't they destroy the room?"

"Excellent question. Answer: The message is in the room."

They turned the entire room upside down until George shouted "Stop!"

Everyone stopped searching immediately.

"The tablet."

"What?"

"The tablet." He ran over to the tablet and sonicked it.

"What are you doing?" Donna asked.

"Scanning the call."

"How can you scan a call?"

"A cellular imprint always exists on a Nexus 5 communicator. I can retrieve the call from that. It's how they got the video onto the DVD." He pressed a code into the door, changing its position and exited into the console room. Everyone following him, he went up to the console and plugged the tablet into the console. "Leave the door to the scene open, Amy." He pressed a couple of buttons on the v-board and a screen on the wall lit up, showing the call.

"Now, in the original call, there would have been nothing. But since this is an imprint, if I separate the layers…There!"

"What is it?" Clara asked.

"A psychic message within the imprint mainframe. Now hold still…" He apparently sonicked the air and pointed the screwdriver at Clara's forehead. All of a sudden a sound began banging inside her head. "Ouch! What's that?"

George frowned. "No clue, you should know. It's in your head. No, wait! Is it like a banging?"

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Pure Base Omega information code, which your brain can't translate. But the only time any information is in Base Omega, is when it is a co-ordinate system." He sonicked the tablet again, while flipping a switch on the console. An entire panel flipped over, revealing a panel with a familiar membranous tissue on it. "Hotline to the TARDIS telepathic circuits, you've used it before. Now the communicator is coded to your fingerprints, so if you put one hand in the tissue and one hand on the communicator…"

The banging began once again, but this time, the TARDIS systems picked up on it and translated it into co-ordinates. As Clara was inevitably thinking about it, the Time Rotor began to oscillate between whirring faster and slower as the TARDIS suddenly shifted course.

"Where are we going?" Clara shouted over the noise.

"I don't know, but wherever it is, it can't be good…"


	16. The Origin of a Renegade

**Author's Note: Here we go with yet another chapter, slightly late but better edited. If I've missed anything in terms of editing, please do not hesitate to tell me! Anyway, here we get to see a slightly different side of George, an interesting change I'd say. Anyway, enjoy!**

* * *

They just narrowly missed the missile.

"What the hell was that?" Clara screamed as the rest of them struggled to hold on. Luckily George had guessed it was a trap and had been ready to pilot them out of there. He didn't stop until he was sure they were safe.

"Remember that missile that nearly annihilated Nonazon? Actually never mind that! Donna! How's your husband and child?"

"What?"

"You thought staying at your parents' house more often would keep them safe. But sorry, nope! Luckily, U.N.I.T. managed to reach there on time and save them. Told them you'll be coming back in a day or two. Enough time to think up an excuse. Now! The missile. Do you two remember how the Doctor went chasing after Nonazon, as the planet it was shot towards?"

Both Clara and Donna nodded.

"Well, its origination also seems to be Nonazon. However, we seemed to have made it orbit us and slingshot around us so it makes it look like it was shot at Nonazon. I don't know why, but we did. Its real target, unfortunately, was us. Or more likely, some planet behind us. Anyway, those co-ordinates were a trap. You know what that means?"

"It means we are being watched?"

"No, it means someone **else** on Nonazon is **also** on the bad side and planted a false clue. However, the Doctor had to have left a message. So we're going to look for it again."

* * *

John spotted it immediately. He pulled out his Sonic. "The Mona Lisa!"

George swivelled around. "What?"

"You see all these priceless artefacts?"

Everyone nodded.

"They're clone copies. All of them are from relatively famous art galleries from around the universe, made for collection, obvious by the holographic signatures that float next to them."

"So?"

"So, tell me my dear George, what art gallery leaves its signature on the frame of a painting. More importantly, what art gallery has a signature that looks like a Police Public Call Box, hidden behind a perception field?"

They completely tore apart the Mona Lisa, not completely assuaged by the fact that it wasn't the original. Inside they found a card with one word written on it.

**Nuwer.**

* * *

**15 minutes later, in the TARDIS.**

John walked up to George. There was no one else except for the two of them and River, everyone else off preparing for their stopover.

"George, I know you know."

"Yeah, I know. I know that they shot it towards Nuwer. They know that the Doctor's left something there. I also know that my TARDIS acted automatically to alter the missile's flight path. And lastly, I know that **they…they're** going to pay."

"George, we can't have that. I need you to listen. We can't-"

"No, John. I need you to listen. You know what happens when people attack those close to me. They're lucky I'm doing nothing. Or else, maybe tomorrow, they'd have woken up on the brink of mass genocide."

* * *

**City of Nuwer, Nuwer.**

Clara was happy to finally have the distinction made. For the short time they'd been on Nuwer, Clara had wondered whether the entire planet had been the city. And it wasn't her alone. The fact that the horizon ended exactly where the city ended, on all sides, made everyone think that. Only thing that made the distinction was that they'd landed on the edge of the city.

Once they got off, George pointed at a farm boy. Well, not exactly a boy, he was about 20. "He'll help us." He called to the kid.

"Yes, sir. How may I help-"

"Skip the pleasantries, I know you're from the Nuwerian War Command. I need you to pass on a message to them. Tell them they might face a level 7 incursion if they're not smart. And tell them that they have visitors. About time they stopped slacking off."

"And under whose authority are you predicting a level 7 incursion?" The boy's voice was cold and confident, a voice bred for leading in the front line.

George smiled. Years of travelling and seeing the horrors of the universe had made him rude.

"Johnson, isn't it?" The kid nodded, dumbfounded by the fact that a stranger recognised him.

"Tell your dad Thesian that the Time Lord he'd saved all those years ago has come back to return the favour again. And tell him to set up a meeting place in the War Chamber."

* * *

George didn't miss a step, which was exactly what John expected. As soon as they entered the War Chamber, George set down the rules of the discussion to High Warrior Thesian (sort of like a general), although they were not what the rest of their group had expected them to be. "First things first, no one here uses my name, you shall refer to me as George. Second, make sure no word of me gets out. I'm going to be here very briefly. Three…no I guess that's it."

"Of course, my Lord."

"Thesian, I've told you to get rid of that my Lord thing, it's not fitting of a friend. Make that three, then. No one refers to me as 'My Lord'."

"Of course…George. May I ask the reason of your visit? Or are you here for the usual?"

"No. This time, official business. I trust you've heard of the Doctor?"

None but a trained eye or one that knew his secret could have spotted the silent dialogue that passed between the two men.

"But of course! The Doctor is famous across the universe. Is something wrong? Is there a problem?"

George nodded. "There is. He has been kidnapped. And we believe that Nuwer holds the solution."

* * *

As George discussed business, Rose sidled up to John on a bench outside the War Chamber. "What's up with the 'My Lord' business?" A couple of others came closer to hear the answer.

John sighed. Secrets were secrets, but with almost everybody there, he'd have to reveal something. He cleared his throat and spoke in a whisper, so as to not let George know the topic under discussion. "He's sort of the patron of Nuwer. Came here in his childhood with his parents, so the story goes. A while ago, back on Gallifrey, he held an intermediate position in the Citadel hierarchy. This was back when the 'non-interference' policy was followed pretty strictly. But then Nuwer came under attack from a race known as the Drakens, sort of a half snake, half humanoid race; really not that smart but extremely good at war. On their behalf, once they'd already tried, he tried to get permission to get the Celestial Intervention Agency to help, but the High Council was having none of it. Finally, he decided to ignore the policy and illegally snuck weapons out of the Time Vaults to help the Nuwerians. Fought on the front line. Taught them tactics. Taught them how to use weapons, how to manufacture them. Armed them to the teeth, it's been said. Won the war. The High Council nearly threw him off Gallifrey for it, but circumstances forced them to relent."

"What circumstances?'"

No one had noticed George come up. "Fact that I was right. They learnt a lesson that day, the Time Lords. Come on, we got it."

"Got what?"

George held up a crystal, a perfect tetrahedral diamond-like crystal the size of a fist. "This. The Doctor threw this to one of the people in the Nuwerian delegation to the peace conference as the Cybermen took him away, told him to hang on to it."

"Let's go then!"

George turned back to the High Chamber. "Maybe I should get some Shadow Proclamation protection troops assigned to Nuwer, just in case. With my authority, it should be relatively no problem. Or maybe…"

John laid a hand on George's shoulder. "They can protect themselves…George. In any case that would be an **abuse** of power. If nothing else, you'd end up showing your hand. Let it go. They can face the dangers themselves."

"I know. It's just…" He shook his head and took a couple of deep breaths. "Right. Never mind. Let's go."

* * *

**Please Review guys!**


	17. Three Point Five (And One Besides)

**Author's Note: Sorry for the late update, I got stuck at the previous chapter. In the IB I rarely get time with all the deadlines I have, so don't expect speedy updates from now. I'll try my best to make them fast. I decided to make this a short and shocking chapter, more of an interlude than a proper chapter.**

**Please note that there is something called a Rift Stone. Those who watch Torchwood will know it as the pyramid shaped object in _Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang_. For the rest of you, it's a storage device.**

* * *

Martha stared at the crystal that High Warrior Thesian had given them. It wasn't like a diamond exactly, it was slightly less transparent and had a slight bluish tint to it. George spotted her looking at it. Not to be rude, she asked "What is it?"

George removed it from the small ornamental claw on the Console that was holding it up. "It's a crystal from the planet Midnight, a planet made of pure diamond. The planet is constantly bombarded by X-tonic radiation, extremely inimical to life, so it is rather hard for anyone to have removed this without wearing a suit made of Finitoglass. Or a TARDIS shield. Or…"

"Or?"

"There are a few other possibilities. But we're all missing something. Come on, think!"

"What?"

"The message! Where's the message?!"

"So there's more to the crystal than meets the eye."

George nodded. There had to be more.

* * *

It was John who came up with the answer 6 hours later.

"Eureka!" he shouted, causing George to drop his book in surprise and all the others to stop whatever they were doing.

"What's wrong?" George asked, picking up his book.

"Perpendicular Energies!"

George nearly fell out of his seat, as the others approached the Console.

"What's that?" Donna asked. "Or rather, what are those?"

George now wore a wide smile on his face. "Perpendicular Energy is an Extremity Crystal theory. Extremity Crystals are crystals which can survive in extreme conditions, hence becoming extremely rare and valuable. The Perpendicular Energy theory states that certain energies are perpendicular in nature in terms of the effects they have on the crystal. If one type of radiation is reflected another will pass through. Since X-tonic radiation is reflected off a Midnight crystal's surface, an energy 'perpendicular' to X-tonic radiation could pass through it. And we have one right here. Artron energy. And we're going to transfer it using this!"

He pointed his Sonic Screwdriver at a corridor door, changing the TARDIS's Architectural Configuration, causing the door to expand to a huge size. He then pressed a button. The corridor door opened and a huge tube, resembling a particle accelerator unfolded into the room.

River arched a brow. "Sometimes I think you show off too much."

George smiled. "I think the same."

* * *

George fiddled with the particle accelerator. "The accelerator's connected to a battery made of seventeen artron cells. Refined enough for what we're about to do. John, give me 26 atto-omegas!"

John powered up the accelerator, setting the rate using the modulation set in his hand.

"Great! Now convert it to thermal energy."

"Are you crazy?!" River suddenly interrupted. "That much thermal energy will blow up the TARDIS."

"The crystal will contain it. Unless you doubt my calculations." River remained silent.

John reluctantly modulated the artron energy, causing the crystal to grow white-hot and shatter, leaving behind a pyramid shaped object.

"A Rift Stone. Now, why am I not surprised?"

* * *

**8 hours later.**

Everyone except River had gone to sleep. She'd been going through insomnia spells lately and even cookies and milk didn't seem to be helping her. After a bout of pacing she took out her Sonic and tried to open the Rift Stone again.

"It won't work."

She swung around to find George standing at the corridor.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"It needs something else as well. Follow me."

He entered a code into the door and it opened into one of the most beautiful sights River had seen in her life.

"The Eye of Harmony…"

George nodded. "A temporal anomaly. Strong Rift Stones need either a temporal anomaly or a Rift nearby to be opened. At least a Gallifreyan one like this one does. In fact, this one looks familiar, I don't know why."

"Could it be…?"

"It could. I'm too old to remember something like a particular Rift Stone."

"Should I?"

"Go ahead. A tip? Use the red setting and the dampers. You know it as well as me that those were his favourites."

River took a deep breath, configured her Sonic and pointed it at the Rift Stone. The Rift Stone glowed golden and slowly slid open. By this time Amy and a couple of others had come through the open door.

"A key?"

"Apparently. Pass it here."

River threw the key at George who caught it between his thumb and index finger. "Hmm…could it be…?"

He threw the key at Rory, who fumbled a bit before catching it.

"How does it feel temperature-wise, Rory?" George asked.

"Cold. Why?"

"Because it's a TARDIS key. They **always** feel warm to Time Lords because we can sense the symbiotic link between the TARDIS and its Time Lord."

"A TARDIS key. That means-!"

"Yeah. The Doctor had a backup. He gave us the way to his cell while sitting in his cell. Just like the Doctor."

"So, that's it then? We found him?"

George chuckled darkly. "If only life were so easy."

"Bio-damper?"

"Uh huh. Masks the symbiotic link too. But there must be something else. I need to think. Oh! River and John, could you stay back?"

Everybody except John and River left the room, knowing fully well that George needed space to think.

* * *

"What do you need?" River asked once they left. "That key was cold as ice. But what you said about TARDIS keys was true. So that means that although that looked like one of his TARDIS keys, it wasn't one."

George silently walked over to one end of the floor they were on and reached over onto an extremely high shelf on the floor below. He picked up a box from it and came back to the other two.

There was a sudden intake of breath from John. "A Name Box!" he gasped.

River seemed shocked too, clearly aware that the Doctor had a Name Box. "But the Doctor's name box contains Control Coins. Are you telling me that he left the key to the cupboard? With us?"

George shrugged. "For probably the seventh time in my entire life of 2800 years, I'm clueless. He can't know who I am, there's not a person in this universe except you two and Jack who knows who I-Oh!"

"What's wrong?"

"We need to land now."

* * *

The others had noticed something was wrong when George's TARDIS landed on a planet that was not scheduled. They followed the three out of his TARDIS onto a barren field.

"You can come out of hiding now!" he shouted to no one in particular. "I know you're there!"

Silence still hung in the air.

"Don't take me for a fool! I should have guessed a long time ago. At least now I know!"

Suddenly, a door opened in mid-air in the distance. Someone laughed out and giggled gleefully.

Clara suddenly felt uncomfortable, but she couldn't place why. "What's going on, George?"

George smiled darkly. "The Master returns."


	18. The Downfall of a Renegade

**Author's Note: Tried to update as quickly as I could, seems like I succeeded! Never mind that. A little warning on this chapter: if you expected Missy to play a big-ish role, you're right, she will. But not right now. Now, as usual, it's Missy's job to withhold as much information as she can from the team. Let's see how far she gets. Missy isn't the villain here, for the first time. This is a slightly longer chapter, but the action is written in smaller bursts, so it might feel a little weird. But I feel more comfortable writing like this. So all notes aside, please do enjoy the chapter and review!**

* * *

If everyone else was wary, Clara felt murderous. But apparently they needed Missy. Surprisingly, she seemed to be acting a little different because George was there. She gave a low curtsy, one which was part mocking but part** sincere** too. "George again, isn't it?"

"Koschei. You regenerated. Didn't think I'd see you again. 'Didn't want to' would be a better way to frame it."

"Now that's rude!"

"I might trust you a bit, but I don't have to be nice to you."

"Point taken."

Missy agreeing with someone? Clara shook her head. How was this happening?

* * *

Missy sat on a sofa in the Console Room, sipping a cup of tea. Everyone was surprised to see she wasn't restrained in any way. Clara voiced as much.

"Why isn't she handcuffed or something, George?"

George turned his head to her. "She won't try anything while I'm here. She wouldn't dare. Out of respect, and perhaps fear too."

"I'm not deaf, you know."

"I never said you were. You know what will happen if you try something."

Missy nodded. She did know.

* * *

Martha felt weird. Not at the Master having regenerated into a lady, the Doctor had hinted that it was possible. She was feeling weird at seeing Missy obeying George and agreeing with him. She knew that at least one other person felt the same, and thought that everyone else did too. The Master respected no one, except possibly the Doctor. So why was he/she acting so out of character?

George had decided his TARDIS wouldn't be flying until they had extracted all the information they needed. How true that information would actually be…

Missy put down her cup of tea. "Now, I don't know where the Doctor is, but he left me this…" She held up a golden disc, shaped like a UFO with Circular Gallifreyan writings on it.

"His Confession Dial…" came a gasp from four people.

"His what?" the rest asked.

"The Doctor's Confession Dial," explained Missy, "his Last Will and Testament. In this are his-George, you alright?"

George was paler than usual, using the console for support.

"George?"

"We need to leave, right now!"

* * *

**Karn.**

George burst out of the TARDIS while it materialised, risking particular disintegration. But he didn't care.

"SISTER OHILA!"

Ohila came out from behind a large rock a minute later, where she had been meditating. "Master George."

"Did you or did you not deliver his Confession Dial to Missy?"

"Yes. A couple of years ago…"

"No, recently. Not because of Davros."

"No, that was the only time I delivered it."

Rose looked at George. "So it's a fake, then?"

"No. It's real, alright. It's just that the Doctor delivered it himself."

"Couldn't he have sent somebody other than Sister Ohila? I mean, they'd allow him to deliver it, certainly, but why on his own?" River asked.

"Who else could he send it through, other than her and his companions? Nobody except Ohila, Clara, and us Time Lords would have known what it was and how important it was to pass it on immediately. For that matter, no one except Clara and me knew that the Master was still alive, let alone where she was. So the logical conclusion to come to was that he delivered it himself."

"But he's done this before!" Clara argued. "He made a confession dial before too. He got out alive from that situation. Why should we worry this time?"

"Because this time, he isn't going of his own free will. Tell me, Clara, how many times has the Doctor been in a similar situation? Trapped, captured, restrained against his will, about to be killed. A lot, right? How many times has he known that he would come out alive and on top? All of them. Now if he has been captured, and he assumes he is going to die, then I think there is cause to worry."

"So what next?" Donna asked. "We can't keep looking around aimlessly. There must be some other clue he left. It's not like he **wants** to die."

* * *

George face-palmed himself. "Of course! Shit, I should have thought of it earlier!" He was now smiling, much to the surprise of the others.

"What's up?" John asked, confused.

George chuckled, before stopping himself to explain. "What if we're looking at this the wrong way? Obviously, he doesn't want to die, not many people do. But what if he thinks that he **has** to die? What if he thinks that he has no other choice?"

"And you're happy about that?"

"No, I'm not happy about that. I'm happy because the enemy stumbled. They made a mistake. The same mistake we just made. That thing there, is not his Confession Dial."

"What?!" everyone shouted at once.

"George," Missy said patiently, "you do realise us Time Lords can tell when a Confession Dial is real? A Confession Dial contains only a Time Lord's confession. And that is his Confession Dial."

"Oh, no, no, no! That **is** his Confession Dial, and it does contain his confession, but it is something more than that. It's a message."

"What? You're not exactly being clear, George!" Donna said, exasperated.

"Ok, let's think of it this way. Question: If the Doctor is dying, what would he normally do?"

"Try not to die."

"No, don't be obvious. The answer is: he'll call you. He'll call you to meet him, have a good time. There is only once before he didn't call anyone, and he was probably aware of the dangers of that. Clara, you're the expert on that situation. So, here we go again. Question: Why hasn't he called you?"

"He thinks he can win?"

"No, if he thought he could win, he would have won. It's when he thinks that there might be a chance that he might not win, does he not call you. Think again. Here are your givens: he has been captured; the TARDIS, his Sonic, perhaps even his coat, all confiscated. Yet he left no more than the message that we should go to Nuwer and his Confession Dial. This time, it's neither of the two situations we thought it was. He doesn't want to die, nor does he think he's going to die. He has to die."

Realization did not dawn on anybody, until Rose understood. "So why does he have to die? There has to be a reason that is strong enough to compel him to give up fighting."

"And…" George prompted.

"The biggest reason would be that the enemy has one of us."

"Bingo!"

Finally everyone understood. But something dawned on Rose.

"Mom, Dad! We need to get back!"

* * *

George shook his head. "They're safe. I left them on a safe place, along with having all of your families transferred there. No offence, but they're liabilities."

Amy pondered over the issue. "You still didn't explain the Post Time War thing. Did you figure it out?"

George nodded. "It's a practice not many of you would not have noticed. It's the Doctor's goodbye. He lets his living companions live out their natural lives after they have left him or he has left them. He then goes to visit them on their deathbed. He talks to them for a while, enquires about their life when he wasn't around. As they pass away, the Doctor cups their head in his hands and scans their memories. If something had happened to them that they had left out, an attack for example, he would wreak havoc on the perpetrator. His sort of a goodbye gift."

"So if they were to do something to Pre Time War companions, who've probably lived out their life by the 2010s, the Doctor would have known something was happening."

George nodded. "You guys won't die until the late 2000s, which the Doctor doesn't visit too often."

River frowned. "So that leaves…nobody. Wait, what's wrong, John?"

John seemed to be mumbling, on the verge of panic. "No. No. No…"

Realization suddenly dawned on George. "No. Not nobody. There is still one person unaccounted for."

"Who?"

George didn't answer.

"George."

Silence.

"George?"

George finally snapped out of the trance. He began purposefully walking back towards his TARDIS. A Dalek seemed to come out of nowhere, which he shot straight in the eyestalk. The Dalek shut down instead of exploding. They'd probably realised that the explosions would damage other Daleks' casings. Jack and River removed their blasters in anticipation of more, but George waved his hand at them, telling them to put it down. "They know they've won. They won't bother with more than one." He strode in, leaving the door open behind him.

"What do you mean, 'they know they've won'?"

"The person behind this smarter than any of the Doctor's enemies. We've been one step behind them at all points in time. We've seen, heard, smelt, tasted everything that could lead us to the Doctor but found nothing. The Doctor was smart enough to leave a message behind. One that we decoded. It lead us to a crystal which contained a Rift Stone which contained a key. Sorry for my deception, that isn't a TARDIS key. It's a key to a Name Box, which is strictly not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is this. What do we do now that they think they've won?"

John shrugged. "I guess we start again."

* * *

**12 and a half hours later, Crime Scene Facsimile, George's TARDIS.**

As everyone started to fall asleep, George found the last link.

"Got it!" he shouted.

"What?" a couple of the others mumbled sleepily.

"I said, I got it! I was right after all! He did give us the way to his cell, indirectly." He picked up a small spiral-bound notepad from a high shelf, with about 300 sheets of paper in it. The paper looked similar to the piece the Doctor had written 'Nuwer' on.

"A pad of paper?" Donna asked. After so many false hopes they had gone through, everybody had started feeling the same. Hopeless. But John decided to play along. "Something on the piece of paper?"

George nodded. "Tell me, what do you see on it?"

"Nothing, it's blank."

"No, no! The sheet itself."

"It has a watermark."

"Right. Saying what?"

"It's the seal of Nonazon along with a note sheet number embossed, to make it easier to return to it on the pad."

"What's the number?"

"C 2. Where is this going?"

George smiled. "Wait, I'm not done yet. What strikes you as odd?"

John shrugged his shoulders, as did everyone else but Clara answered. "Why would an advanced civilisation like the Nonazonians use paper?"

"Exactly. So the Doctor got it made for himself, as well as probably a filing cabinet. What else do you find odd?"

Everyone stared at the pad, now completely awake. It was Mickey who came up with the answer. "The number in the watermark is C 2. The first page has the number A 1 from it. With a spiral-bound pad like this, why would he tear out a page from the middle?"

"Exactly! Which means?!"

River smiled. "C 2. See two. We missed something on Nuwer. The crystal was not the only thing. There's something else hidden there?"

"But where?" Rory asked.

George smiled grimly. "I know exactly where."

* * *

**Here we go again!**


	19. Time Can Be Rewritten

**Author's Note: Why do I feel like I have posted this chapter before. Hmm...never mind. Let's move on. I'll have a longer Author's Note in the next chapter. I decided to post these two together when I realised I hadn't posted this one already. Anyway, enjoy!**

* * *

**Nuwer.**

"NOOOOOOO!"

All they found left of the city they had visited was ashes. And bodies. Bodies strewn around by the hundreds all around the city. The only living things in the city were them and one, sole, dying Dalek. George took out his alpha-meson blaster and shot the Dalek. Once, twice, thrice. He didn't stop until John laid a hand on his shoulder. "You can't do anything."

George sighed. "You're right. Let's get back to the TARDIS."

Just as soon as everybody entered the TARDIS, George pointed his Sonic at the door. The interior lights dimmed a bit.

George smiled grimly. "The front and corridor doors are deadlocked. We're in for a bumpy ride!"

John ran to try the door. "You wouldn't dare! Certain things can't be rewritten, George!"

"Watch me."

* * *

The TARDIS suddenly flew out of the Time Vortex and into the sky of Nuwer exactly three and a half hours earlier. George pulled the RDS, the Friction Contrafibulator and a third lever. The world around them seemed to blink out of existence, they seemed to be suspended in empty space. He pointed the Sonic at the computer and then flipped the three levers again. When the surroundings returned, the group were standing in a battle TARDIS. The pitch of the Time Rotor increased.

"Why isn't she stopping you?!" John shouted.

"I've disabled the safeguards and the Cloister Bell. I can feel it John. Time is still in flux, the outcome of this event is not decided. And I intend to be the one who does the decision making." He pointed his Sonic at the door. The room lights brightened again, signalling the lifting of the deadlock. Suddenly the frequency of the Sonic shifted and the doors disappeared.

"What did you do?"

"Transferred the front doors to the TARDIS Secondary Console Room and put up a command sequence to transfer them to the TARDIS Morgue next."

* * *

George annihilated the force the Daleks had sent. They thought they could destroy the city of Nuwer with two measly gunships while **he** was still alive. He put everyone in the city on board the Secondary Console Room and then destroyed the city of Nuwer. Or rather an extra five mile radius around what they had seen. He then dropped seven hundred bodies from the TARDIS Morgue onto the ground below and took the inhabitants to other cities to stay for the time being. He then put the TARDIS into motion, not bothering to change into another form.

"Uh, George…"

"Yeah, Amy?"

"We're still in fight mode…"

"I know. There was a time when the Daleks scuttled whenever a Battle TARDIS came near, and that time will come again. Now."

But there were no Daleks to fight. No Cybermen, no Autons, nothing.

George shouted in frustration. "Where could it be? I know what **it** is, I don't know where. No, wait. I…I do."

He suddenly changed the path of the TARDIS as it whizzed eastwards and then steadily downwards.

"Uh, George…that's a graveyard."

"Exactly. We're going to rob a grave."

"Whose?!"

"Mine."

* * *

Everyone waited as George, John, River and Missy manually dug up the grave. Time Lord tradition stated that no one but a Time Lord could dig up another Time Lord's grave. Suddenly someone hit something solid. George took out a Laser Screwdriver from his pocket and cut around the solid object. He offered no explanation as to how and why he had two screwdrivers. The object seemed to be a white coffin, except for the fact that it had identification technology on it.

"John, all yours."

Rose frowned. "Why John? If this is your grave, shouldn't you open it?"

"No. The Doctor doesn't know I'm alive. For him, the man who is in this grave, and I, are two different people. But he knew that I would get John along."

John put his hand on a scanner on the top of the coffin. The scanner seemed to beep in surprise, kicking into action two seconds late. It beeped again, accepting the identification, the coffin slowly opening. The group peered into the coffin. Inside it was…

…nothing. Except a Vortex Manipulator, which looked completely shorted out.

"Where did that come from?" Amy asked in surprise.

"It was inside. With me, when I was dead. Then I was not dead. Then I was dead again. Then not dead again. I couldn't let the Doctor know I was alive, and there was no doubt that he was tracking the Vortex Manipulator, so I reprogrammed it to cause an Emergency Temporal Shift, leaving the Vortex Manipulator behind. Took me straight into the First Day of the Time War."

There was silence as George sonicked the bottom of the coffin. A false bottom rose up, revealing a key.

"Is that…?" River gasped.

George nodded. "His TARDIS key."

"How?"

"What?"

"Future Me put it there after he stole it from the Doctor."

"When?"

"Now."

George sonicked the burnt-ish Vortex Manipulator which was now in Missy's hands. The two of them disappeared, leaving two TARDIS keys on the floor. One for George, one for the Doctor.

* * *

"You don't trust them to save the Doctor."

George turned to face Missy, as they walked towards the Peace Conference on Nonazon.

"No, the exact opposite. I trust them too much. You and the Doctor are best friends. You've fought for centuries. Tell me his biggest advantage."

Missy nodded, understanding. "His companions."

George made a noncommittal sound. "They're also his biggest weakness. If one of them were to die, and the Doctor were to know who had done it, I fear the consequences will be impossible for the Universe to ever fix."

"The War changed you."

"Huh?"

"The Time War changed you. Or perhaps, **Death.** You were **never** this considerate. You'd shoot the first thing in your way if it stopped you from your goal."

George chuckled darkly. "When you actually die, no regeneration, feel your last breath leave you and your consciousness die, then come back…it's not pretty. I travelled through time seeing, the horrors of the Time War. Then regenerated in my TARDIS. Then died again on the same planet I had died a while earlier. Then got put in a coffin by Time Lords. Then woke up again. Then immediately fell through time into a war that had consumed the entire universe. Seemed like a bad joke at first, or a dream. Until a Dalek shot me in the gut, right in the middle of Zuestia-upon-Prydon. Had sneaked up there somehow. My regeneration blew it up. That feeling of a second chance, and then a third chance at life is more pronounced in Time Lords. I think that the one thing that a Time Lord fears the most is death."

"Long speech."

"Yeah, I got better at those too."

"How did you figure it out? Sequence of events?"

George nodded. "The Doctor couldn't have known that we would find all the clues, had he not known we were going to attempt to rescue him. In fact…"

They'd reached. Just as the door to the Doctor's room blew up.

"Move!" George shouted. Missy took out what she called her APG (All Purpose Gadget), while George ran across to the crime scene. He slid straight through the ring of Cybermen surrounding the Doctor, pointing his Sonic at the Doctor's pockets. The Doctor understood, putting his hand in his right coat pocket and activating **his** Sonic Sunglasses. The deafening noise allowed George to discharge an EMP bomb, knocking the Cybermen to the side. Missy walked in, using her APG to create a Time Stop ending at the Cyberman Circle. Time slowed around the three Time Lords until it finally stopped, leaving a very surprised Doctor, a tired George and an amused Missy in its wake.

* * *

"Missy, George?! What are you two doing here?!"

Missy couldn't help but laugh at the shock on the Doctor's face. "Helping you get kidnapped with finesse, of course. Rule 1, Battle Tactics 101. Remember? What've you already planned?"

"Leaving a crystal on Nuwer, at the hands of a Peace Official. I was sure George would rescue **all** my companions and so John would figure it out."

George nodded. "Right. Exactly what we thought. But you need to follow Rule 2. Write 'Nuwer' on page **C2** on that writing pad in your room. Or rather, currently in your TARDIS. Put it inside the Mona Lisa painting and then seal it up. Oh, and pass me a TARDIS key, or this timeline will collapse."

The Doctor looked incredulously at George before handing out a TARDIS key from his pocket. It glowed a very slight golden, before dimming out.

The Doctor eyed George warily. "Why can't I escape?"

George put a finger in the air and felt **Time** around him.

"Because these events are Time Locked. We arrived exactly two and a half seconds before they set the Lock, so we were able to get in. If we don't leave soon, the Time Stop will eventually break down and the sequence of events will be changed, causing the timeline to deteriorate."

"You can't play with Time, George. No one can."

"You're the younger one, Theta. You don't know how to play with Time yet." George pressed down on the Vortex Manipulator, just as Missy released the Time Stop, leaving the Doctor alone to be kidnapped.

* * *

**The Graveyard, City of Nuwer, Nuwer, 26 years earlier than Relative Present.**

"You lied."

The sky shimmered golden, blue, and then pink; something only Time Lords could see. George finished digging up the coffin and sonicked it. His TARDIS distance-hacked it and it opened. He sonicked the inside and opened the false bottom, dropping the key in. He then closed the coffin and began filling up the grave.

"You lied…" Missy repeated.

"What?"

"The timeline just changed. You didn't originally put the key there. In the actual series of events, you'd told the Doctor and he'd put it there. You realise that Time just diverged, right?"

"No. Not diverged. Rewritten. Unlike the Doctor, I know exactly what I'm likely to do in the future, so I can change it."

He looked up at the sky, now back to its original colour. "We should get back."

"Just a question before we do."

"Sure."

"Where did the false bottom come from?"

George smiled. "I made my own coffin."

* * *

**Relative Present, Unknown location, Mutter's Spiral.**

The Twelfth Doctor sat in his cell. They couldn't. The two of them might be the most sarcastic people in the Universe, but there was no doubt that they were going to attempt to save him. Along with the others, of course. But they couldn't. They didn't know the consequences.

He tried to calm himself down by scanning his surroundings again. He was in a Field Cell, much like he'd been on the Dalek Crucible in 2009. The ship seemed to be some sort of a transportation craft modified for battle. How could he tell? The butt of an Asteroid Laser stuck out from underneath the window directly in front of him. He closed his eyes. He remembered each and every part of the ship in his line of sight and probably stuff he hadn't seen yet. This wasn't going to help him concentrate.

A hiss of air from doors sliding open signalled that someone had entered the room.

"Hello Doctor. Welcome to your death."

The Doctor opened his eyes to face Madam Kovarian.


	20. The Cavalry Enters (Late As Usual)

**Author's Note: Sorry these took a while. The previous chapter was quite a turning point, and I didn't want to mess it up. Then I apparently didn't post it at all. So I decided to bring this story _towards_ an end. There's been a bit more editing this time, but they'll still be a few errors here and there. Please feel free to PM me with queries or corrections. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Perhaps one day...**

**Note: The GHOST Drive is my own creation. Any resemblance to an object in Doctor Who or another fanfic is purely coincidental.**

* * *

**George's TARDIS. No Time or Space.**

River sat on the sofa in the Console Room, across John who was sitting on a rather comfortable settee next to a hat stand. George constantly changed the desktop theme and accessories in the console room, but now he was sitting on a stool that he had taken out from under the Console.

River sipped at her tea. "Two questions."

"Go ahead."

"Will his TARDIS key do us any good if it's a Time Lock?"

George shrugged. "No idea. Don't think so. But it might just boost our chances. What's the second question?"

River took a deep breath. "Why did they Time Lock the event in such a way that it'd give us just enough time to reach there by space travel? It makes no sense."

George chuckled darkly. "Hope, Professor Song. Hope. They give us hope and then they crush us."

* * *

**Relative Past, Mutter's Spiral.**

"Ah. The psychotic killer nanny. Hello again! Where are your minions? You usually send them."

Madam Kovarian smiled. "Rude as ever, Doctor. Hello to you too."

"Is it time to give me my Time-Stop pod again?"

"Why are you so eager to meditate? Are you so eager to die? You realise we can see through the pod, so you can't escape?"

"Yeah, but it's a lot quieter. No Dalek birds chirping, no Cybermats squeaking. You get the idea? This a noisy place you have here. What did you promise them in return? War? Maximum extermination-slash-deletion?"

"Your talking won't get you through this time, Doctor. This time you die for true. Of course, we'll only kill you after…"

"DON'T YOU DARE!" the Doctor bellowed. "You lay a finger…"

"Threats aren't as effective when you're on the other side of the cell, Doctor."

"You do anything, and you'll find that rules don't apply to me. I have no rules. I'm not the Doctor you used to know. You even try to do something, you will not live to see another day, Kovarian. Mark my words, mark them well."

* * *

**Zlastor Everymart, Zlastor, Andromeda, Year 4286.**

Zlastor Everymart lived up to its name. It had everything a person could need. Of course, George wasn't looking for something common. The only people he'd brought along were Missy and River, which had confused the others, but River and John had managed to convince them that there was no problem. Which was why Missy was in handcuffs.

Right now, they were at the Zlastor Inter-Planetary Hardware Store.

"What would you like, sir?"

"A TARDIS thermo-coupling, please."

"Just a minute, sir."

Missy, who had been trying to get out of her handcuffs, stopped at George's request. "Why would they have a TARDIS thermo-coupling?"

"They won't. But they will have a manager."

The manager came out exactly 30 seconds later. "Yes, sir. I heard you had a problem."

"Yeah, I wanted to issue a complaint on the TARDIS thermo-coupling you sold me 8 years ago. I was told they would last 600 years. They've worn out already."

"Have you issued a complaint before?"

"Yeah. Complaint ID SP8601."

The manager's breath caught. "Inside, quick! Before anyone sees."

George entered as quickly as he could, Missy and River following. They stepped into a Time Transmat.

"Where are we going?" Missy asked, still confused, just as they arrived.

George smiled. "Welcome to the Shadow Proclamation."

* * *

**The Shadow Proclamation.**

The Shadow Architect was waiting for them. "I hope you have information, Master George." Her tone was oddly respectful, as if George was somehow of a higher rank than her.

George wasted no time. "I have his TARDIS key. I need the GHOST Drive." The Shadow Architect nodded and sent someone off with instructions. Then she too exited the room, whispering something in George's ear before leaving.

River frowned. "George…this wouldn't be related to the High Council of Time Lords, would it?"

George sighed. He'd have to explain. Might as well be Missy and River.

"The GHOST Drive was a secret project by the Celestial Intervention Agency, under my Presidency, and continued ever since. It was a project to isolate points in time and create a profile of their past. It sounds like an easy thing, and it is on a small scale, but with the Ghost Drive, we could do it on an almost planetary scale. A couple of High Council officials and I realised the devastation it could cause and we put it in the Omega Arsenal. Two hundred and seven years before the Time War, I returned there and stole it. I used it for wrongs, wrongs I now regret. After the Time War, I handed the Ghost Drive to the Shadow Proclamation. But when you look at it…"

And then it arrived. It didn't look impressive at all. It was a slightly larger-than-normal computer with an external hard drive connected to it. The Shadow Architect seemed to have left them alone.

"That's it?" River asked, surprised. "This is the GHOST Drive?"

George chuckled. "It may not look like much, but when you have enough power to conduct half-level Block Transfer Computations…. It, however, does not work against a Time Lock. There are only three times I know of that a Time Lock has been breached. Once by me, once by a Dalek named Caan, and the third by three Doctors. But if we combine its power with my TARDIS's computing power, we can use it to plot the location of the Doctor's other TARDIS keys."

Missy raised an eyebrow. "So that's it? Rather Deus Ex Machina, isn't it?"

George laughed heartily, startling the other two. "That, by no means, is it. Even if we have that data, it just gives us the location of their ship. We still have the impossible task of breaching the Time Lock. This situation is far from Deus Ex Machina."

* * *

The GHOST Drive worked well enough, it gave them the locations of the TARDIS keys. There was only one problem. They were scattered around the universe. He and River were the only ones searching, Missy currently having a cup of tea with the Shadow Architect and five Judoon guards.

"How did they do that?" River asked. "They couldn't have, unless…"

"Unless the Doctor gave them access to the TARDIS. Or…"

"Or?"

"Or if they have a Time Lord…"

Missy walked in just about then. "Isn't it convenient?"

"What?"

"That we have the GHOST Drive. One of your usual tricks, George? Your time tricks."

"Are you accusing me of something, Koschei? Are **you** suggesting that…"

Missy realised she had messed up. "No, absolutely not. I didn't mean…"

"Good. Watch your step Koschei. We both know why I am even allowing you to help. Twelve centuries. You promised. Retribution for your crime."

Missy flinched. She remembered all too well.

* * *

**The Ship of the Silence, Mutter's Spiral.**

The Doctor put on his Sonic Sunglasses. Handy, having an unknown sonic device. He could disable the shields around him easily, but doing so would alert them. The Field Cell was just thin enough that he could scan through it. He'd scanned the computer interface for a bypass code two hundred times already. They'd soon get an idea that the Sunglasses weren't just for show. He'd have to work fast…

Two hours later and he'd figured out another flaw in the code. With the amount of information he had, he could crash the ship, if he had access to a device with numbers on it, he could clone it and use number strings on it to try and bypass the security codes. But the probability of that happening was near zero. Oh, how much he wished for a miracle! He had to get them out at all costs. He looked at the cell next to him for the three hundred and eighth time that hour. She was still there. How could he get them **both** out safely? Was there any hope?

That was when the TARDIS phone started ringing.

* * *

**Relative Past, George's TARDIS.**

They'd searched for hours, and they were still searching. They thought there was no way in, and that there was no hope, when suddenly George burst in.

"I GOT IT! I GOT THE DEUS EX MACHINA!"

Everybody jumped up immediately.

"What is it?!" River asked.

"We call the TARDIS phone."

Everybody stared at him for a moment. Then they sat back down again. "Seriously George?" River asked. "Even if we call the phone, it's in a Time Lock. Even a phone signal can't breach a Time Lock. Nothing is too primitive for a Time Lock. Except maybe a white point star."

"Trust me. I can do it."

"How?"

George just smiled and pulled the RDS. "We're going to break the Laws of Time.

* * *

**Gallifrey, A very long time ago.**

The repairman walked up to the screen showing the alert.

"It's the repair shop. Who would want to steal a faulty TARDIS? Let's alert the authorities." They turned to press the intercom button when a man walked into the room.

"There will be no need for that gentlemen." He took out a sealed envelope with a v-slate inside. The envelope had a stamp on it, the official seal of the High Council. "It's a routine exercise, under the Lord President's orders. Carry on with your work." The man walked out, leaving them to open the envelope. The false v-slate blew, releasing tons of Retcon into the room. The repairmen collapsed.

* * *

George calmly walked out and tossed the Doctor's TARDIS key to John. "I've bought you 4 minutes. While the echo Clara talks to them, you'll be able to rewire the TARDIS telephone. Just insert this worm into the TARDIS computer systems and leave."

"Gotcha."

John turned to leave but George called after him. "And John…"

"Yeah?"

"…good luck. And thanks."

John smiled and pressed a button on the Vortex Manipulator. He vanished into the Time Vortex.

* * *

**Outside the High Council of Time Lords, Gallifrey.**

An officer came running up to the Chancellor. "Sir, there's been a breach at the TARDIS repair shop. Unauthorized time travel, sir."

The Chancellor frowned. Unauthorized time travel, in the repair shop of all places. But the High Council was about to judge the Malandi case, the most notorious time scam till now. There could be a numerous things that could go wrong. Should he or shouldn't he? He thought for a moment.

"It's the repair shop. All they can do is steal a faulty TARDIS. Let it be."

"As you say, Chancellor."

* * *

**George's TARDIS, 2 hours later (relatively).**

Everybody seemed unusually hyped up. They had been wandering around in circles the past few weeks. At least now they had hope.

"So what's the plan?" Amy asked.

"A rather complicated one, but one that will most likely work. We've used the GHOST Drive to figure out the location of his TARDIS keys. Whoever is behind this, knows we have the GHOST Drive, so they scattered the keys across the Universe. But they forgot one thing. There's more to the GHOST Drive than meets the eye. If we use it to plot the locations of different Doctors and then correlate that with the locations of his TARDIS keys a little time in the past, we can figure out where the ship is."

"But what about the Time Lock?"

"Don't worry, I figured out a way. Remember how I said that every object that has been allowed into the Time Lock has a Time Trail? Well, it's related to that."

"So what next?"

"Next, we need a Metebelis III crystal."


	21. Deus Ex Machina

**Author's Note: Quite a speedy update. Didn't expect to update so fast, but I felt that I might as well continue writing. So I apparently ended up finishing this one too. And that brings us really close to the end. Like a 'couple of chapters' close. So the light at the end is arriving. So guys, please enjoy, and please review!**

**Note: The Reference Frame Implosion is partly my own creation. It is based off to what happens in the minisode Time Crash, except there are no TARDISes crashing. Any resemblance to anything else from Doctor Who or another fanfic is purely coincidental.**

* * *

**George's TARDIS.**

Getting a Metebelis III crystal wasn't the hard part. It was what they were about to do with it.

George typed a number into the keypad next to one of the corridor doors. "What we're about to do is irreversible. I'll probably be the stupidest person in existence for asking this question, but do any of you want to turn back?"

Everyone rolled their eyes at him.

"Right. Thought as much."

* * *

He led them down the corridor into a room with an extremely large cylindrical chamber in it.

"What's that?"

George sighed. "It's a modified Extraction Chamber. One of the original uses of an Extraction Chamber was to force regeneration for…well let's just say the outcome wasn't very nice. This modified one will help us track the Doctor by tracking his regenerations through time."

"How?" Amy asked.

"It's complicated."

Martha chuckled. "We've been with the Doctor, I don't think anything could be more complicated than the Doctor."

George shrugged. They had a point.

* * *

"The Ghost Drive helped us track the keys. The Extraction Chamber, combined with the TARDIS Navigation System can help us track different incarnations of the Doctor. When we reach his current incarnation, we can extrapolate our function to find a theoretical position based on his previous destinations. Since he won't be at any of them, we use the worm in his TARDIS telephone, to approximate a location. Once we come close enough, I can use the Metebelis III crystal and the TARDIS telepathic field to communicate with him."

"How?" Clara asked, intrigued. "I thought that was only for navigation."

"Not the membrane. The field that actually permeates Time and Space and helps you translate languages, for one. He'll use the Sonic Sunglasses to pick up the call and transmit his thoughts telepathically, and I'll use the worm to transmit my voice. We'll get the co-ordinates from there. To be safe, we'll have to assume that's all he'll have time for, before they come to check on him. Naturally, I'm already on to it."

"What about getting into the Time Lock?" River asked.

"One thing at a time, guys. One thing at a time."

* * *

Missy confronted George. "Rule 263 of Battle Tactics 101, don't antagonise the rescue team. What are you doing, George? I don't know what you're up to, but it won't end well."

George tried to come up with something to say, but for the first time, Koschei was making a point from the 'Good' point of view. He sighed. "I have trust issues. I trusted someone too well once. You probably know the story better than I do."

Missy nodded. She did. But… "That was more than two millennia ago, George. A lot has happened since then. "

"You're right. I hate saying it, but you're right."

Just as George moved to have the conversation with the Doctor as scheduled (everyone else would be there in a minute),River entered the Console Room, trembling to the core.

"River, what's wrong?!"

River looked at George, pure terror plastered all over her face. "I figured out who they have in custody. It's **her.** The only one unaccounted for."

* * *

**The Ship of the Silence, the Seventeenth Cluster, Mutter's Spiral.**

The Doctor sat silently with his Sonic on. The GHOST Drive. Had to be. The TARDIS phone had been ringing all this time, but silently after the first 12 rings. Clever. A worm inserted into the TARDIS mainframe. Only way they could contact him. But…

He shook his head. Only way out. He switched the Sonic to silent mode and accepted the call.

* * *

Back on the TARDIS George jumped in alarm as the v-board behind him beeped suddenly. "He's on!" George shouted, as he plunged his hands into the membranous tissue, prompting everyone to rush into the Console Room from the various corridors. "Hello."

_"Ah. George. Hello again. How's everything?"_

"Everything's fine. Everyone's fine."

_"How did you call?"_

"Inserted a worm into your TARDIS **before** you stole it, so that it would ring the exact second I wanted it **to.** Then I calculated where you would be when it rung. I assumed you wouldn't pick it up on the first ring, so…"

_"Smart."_

"Not really. You would have thought it up."

The Doctor's voice suddenly took on a hard tone. _"How do you know me? Who are you really? You would have to have been there in the Academy because you know my name. You managed to convince three of my companions whom **I** consider inconvincible. You play with Time as if it's **yours** to play with. You seem to know every other thing about me, but I know nothing about you. You have an unparalleled arrogance, but also one of the softest demeanours I have ever seen. You can't be me, or the Blinovitch Limitation affect inside the Time Stop on Nonazon, seeing how delicate Time Stops are, would have blown the field to bits. I know one thing though…"_

"And that thing is irrelevant, Doctor. We're trying **to** save you."

_"Well I don't want you to!"_

"Why not?"

_**"BECAUSE YOU CAN'T! Because you don't understand. Battle Tactics 101, rule 17, don't walk into the Janus trap."**_

George sighed. "Of course. To be expected."

_"Duh! Explain to the others what a Janus trap is and why I can't have you save me."_

Jack raised an eyebrow. "What does he mean, George?"

"A Janus trap. The Janus is a **two** headed species, one at the back and one at the front, the female of which can see into the past with one and into the future with the other. The Janus trap isn't related to it except by the **two** headed bit. A Janus Trap basically ensures that an abducted person will not escape. You ensure that the abducted person is abducted by one person who he or she holds dear, while another goes around looking for him. If both the captured and the searching party are then led to the same place, well…you get the Janus trap. Neither the past or the future will save you."

* * *

_"I told you. There's no point. There's no way you'll find me either. I scrambled the co-ordinate search system just a few seconds ago."_

George chuckled. "You were right about one thing, Theta. You don't know me at all. Do you think I'd waste my time leaving such a simple worm in the TARDIS mainframe?"

_"What do you mean?"_

George pressed a button on his TARDIS's main v-board. Back on the other side of the call, the Cloister Bell rung.

_"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"_

"I initiated a Reference Frame Implosion for T-minus 120 minutes, which means that in 2 hours, the ship you're in is going to be part of a Black Hole. The only way I'm going to cancel the implosion is if you give me the co-ordinates of the ship."

_"You wouldn't."_

"No, Theta. **You** wouldn't."

He shut down the call, but didn't switch off the worm broadcast. The Doctor could call them back if he wanted to.

* * *

Everyone around George was in shock. Rose was the one to break out first. "This is what you meant by irreversible. If he doesn't agree, the ship becomes a Black Hole."

"He will."

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Then we use the co-ordinates from the call to find him."

"He said he scrambled them."

"He did. But Block Transfer Computation scrambling doesn't work quite the same way. He needs a Base Code to scramble it from. I implanted the number 2 in his mind. Now all we have to do is rewire it through the inverse and we get the original code, and therefore the co-ordinates."

"That is it?"

"Yup. Get some sleep, guys. This is the **real** Deus Ex Machina."

* * *

**George's TARDIS.**

_**Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!**_

George jumped out of bed. Intruder Alert?

He picked up his Alpha Meson blaster from its gun holster next to his bed. Nobody could breach his TARDIS. He'd set the safeguards and shields to maximum, not to mention several traps around the TARDIS for unregistered biological life-forms. Unless…

…unless the intruder had always been on board. He had never taken a life-form scan since the first. Couldn't be a creature from the Vortex, so it had to be one of their enemies. He set the power setting of the blaster to maximum. He pressed the Console Room code into the code panel. He hurried in and transferred the alert code into his Sonic Screwdriver. He set the Screwdriver to the scan setting and holstered it into his gun holster. He took the blaster in his hand and typed the area code in. For some reason it seemed really familiar. He stepped in…

…and arrived right at the edge of the exterior shell. And the only things kept there were…the escape pods.

Without warning a pod opened up and someone pushed him in.

"What the hell?!"

He swung around to find John and River closing the pod doors. He slammed a palm against the doors. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Let me out!"

John shook his head. "Can't. You know as well as I, why I can't. I figured out the way into the Time Lock. Since it has to have the same Time Trail, we use my TARDIS, which by being in proximity to yours, would have accelerated its activating process. You noticed it as soon as your TARDIS notified you about the extra weight on her. Of course, it's just **nearly** the same. Which is what his key is for. We use the key to create a clone copy, which we can do by using the true limits of the GHOST Drive. You made a mistake by mentioning Block Transfer Computations. We already sent everyone onto my TARDIS. We're not going to launch you. You'll just remain locked up till we leave."

"I can hack through."

"It's deadlocked. It would be useless to try."

"Why?"

"The Janus trap. You said it yourself. Two of the dearest people. We're expendable."

"NOT TO HIM! YOU ARE NOT EXPENDABLE TO HIM! If one of you dies for him, he will rip the entire universe to shreds looking for those responsible! I know what's going to happen, because it has already happened once before!"

"Better us than you."

"Not when he doesn't know who I am. It's a trap. It's called the Janus **Trap** for God's sake. It even has the word **trap** in it. No other traps are so kind."

"You don't trust us then?"

"No. I trust you too much. Each and every one of you would die for the Doctor, but you don't have a clue of what that will do to the Doctor."

"Too late." River pressed a button on her Vortex Manipulator and the two of them disappeared with a zap, leaving George alone in the pod. A half hour timer started ticking down for the deadlock, but it **was** too late. He could hear the sound of John's TARDIS leaving. Never had the sound of a TARDIS drained hope out of anyone. Except this once.

But one spark remained. One thing made George smiled. Now nothing held him back. Now the Universe would get to know how much damage he could do.


	22. Reunion

**Author's Note: I'd say this is a rather confusing chapter, but seeing as 12th Grade is getting over soon, I decided to bring this story to an end. I kinda incorrectly guessed the use of an Extraction Chamber, so I've created a new type. A Regeneration Extraction Chamber freezes a regeneration, so that a Time Lord can no longer regenerate. Plus, you won't see certain scenes in this chapter because they might be for a later fanfic (in a different series). They don't affect the story in any way. But never mind that. Enjoy! I have a little surprise at the end.**

**P.S. Sorry SuOmAlAiNeN92, this won't be the reunion you expected, but I figured that since they were springing him from a prison cell inside a Time Lock, they wouldn't have time for a reunion.**

* * *

**The**** Capitol, Gallifrey, a bit before the End of Time.**

A soldier came running to the General. "Ma'am, we have an unauthorised breach."

The General looked up from her work, irritated. "So? You know the standard procedure. Shoot an EMP and Paralyser shell, lower it down to ground and then survey it. Shoot enemies on sight. What's so hard about that?"

"There's a problem with that, ma'am."

"And what's that?"

"The ship is a Battle TARDIS, ma'am."

* * *

George stepped out of his TARDIS, facing seven soldiers, holding a modified Demat gun. He wasted absolutely no time. "You've already scanned me, so you know who I am and what I am carrying. I need an emergency War Council session scheduled."

"But sir…"

"No buts. Your current Lord President is in danger. You all know who I am. I need an emergency War Council session right now! Or do you want to argue with me when the Doctor is in danger? Because you know what will happen."

The soldiers shut up.

* * *

The Chancellor was waiting. As the Lord President was absent, the Chancellor was the highest ranking official present. The General had come to him to inform that the Time Lord known as…well, he went by George now. What she didn't expect to see was a young man. A Time Lord well into his 2000s, George had been quite a legend back in the school days of the Deca. To meet a legend, well…chances like these didn't come too often.

George, however, was not as pleased to see the Chancellor.

"I said **War** Council, not High Council. What are you doing here?"

"Welcoming you. And talking this out. Now what's all this fuss-"

George pointed the gun at the Chancellor. "I stated it quite clearly. Out!"

"Now, now. There's no need to rush into a bad decision."

George powered the gun up. "One last warning. Get the hell out of here before I shoot your head off."

Unsurprisingly, the Chancellor didn't argue. "Before I go, is there anything I can provide you with?"

George shrugged. "If you have an Anti-Peripheriser, that would be helpful. And I need access to an Extraction Chamber. Normally I'd find my own way, but if you're ready to help, I have no problem."

* * *

**The Seventeenth Cluster, Mutter's Spiral.**

It took the companions much longer than it should have. But in the end they got there. Just as John set his TARDIS on its flight path, he realised something was up. "Where are the Paternoster Gang?"

The rest of the companions looked at him, confused. "What?"

"Where are Strax, Jenny, and Vastra?"

About half the companions shrugged.

Amy frowned. "They weren't on board when I came along."

John nodded. "They weren't there when I came on either. The last people to see them were…"

"…us" finished Jack. "They weren't there when we returned to the TARDIS on Pete's World."

"But how did we not notice them?" Clara asked.

John smiled darkly. "Peripheriser."

"Peri-what?"

"Peripheriser, Mickey. It's like the Perception Field around the TARDIS, except it filters out thoughts instead of images. George must have integrated it into the TARDIS mainframe somehow."

"So where are they?"

"I don't know. But I have a few ideas…"

* * *

**Gallifrey.**

The General looked puzzled at the instructions the Chancellor had given her. "Anti-Peripheriser, I can understand. Why do you want an Extraction Chamber?"

"Oh, right. I don't need a Time Extraction Chamber, although now that you mention it, that's a better idea. Never mind, I'll use the TEC first."

"What's the plan?" the General asked, as they stepped up to Time Extraction Chamber 7.

George stepped up to the controls. "Normally, Time Extraction Chambers would be used for isolating a point in time. But that's the not the plan. Well, it is the first bit. Set it to this location."

He handed the General a paper with Space-Time Coordinates written on it.

"Where is this to?"

George smiled. "Possibly a very huge Blinovitch Limitation Effect if I've got this wrong."

* * *

**George's TARDIS, Relative Past.**

They had just picked up three of the Doctor's companions, but the Paternosters weren't quite convinced that this was a good idea. They grew even more confused as the Time Rotor suddenly stopped spinning. In fact, it was like Time itself had stopped. Suddenly the TARDIS doors seemed to open, revealing George standing in some sort of a white room. The three of them looked at him, confused.

"Quickly!" George mouthed. Jenny and Strax looked at Vastra, who shrugged. They followed him through the white door into a white room.

"Where are we?" Jenny asked.

"You're on Gallifrey, at the End of Time, inside an Extraction Chamber. I've used up a lot of energy getting you out of a point in your Timeline when you're not dying. This has to be quick. I know it's a favour, but I need you to help me with something. I'll put you back into the Timeline and re-extract you later. I need you to get a TARDIS key from an alternate universe. Don't worry, I'll get you back. Then, I need you to do this…"

* * *

**The Seventeenth Cluster, Mutter's Spiral.**

"What do we do then? Do we go looking for them?"

River shook her head. "Whatever they're doing, they're doing to help us or George. But George can't be helped until the deadlock seal breaks. Forget them."

Amy had been a little reluctant to voice her worries but decided that it was about time. "What if he's the bad guy, River?"

"He's not."

"How are you so sure?"

"I am."

"You've got to give us more than that, guys. You, John, and Jack are the only ones who know who he is, and you guys refuse to tell us anything."

"We can't."

"Why not?"

"ENOUGH!"

Everybody looked at John in shock. John, for the first time in a long while, was angry, boiling with rage. "All of you, listen to me! We go on with the plan because it is the only one we have. Yeah, maybe to you, George isn't as trustworthy as he is to us. But do you think we are really so stupid as to go in blind?! I saw them talk to the Doctor as he was kidnapped, quite against what they had planned. His kidnapping was a fixed point in time. Yet, he and Missy risked tearing time apart to make sure we had a fighting chance. And tell me, why would we trap him and put him in a deadlocked sealed pod?"

Everyone remained silent. John, however, was not quite done.

"Guys? I'm serious. Why?"

Finally, Rose spoke up. "Because he's special to the Doctor."

John nodded, calming down. "Yeah. Yeah." He exhaled deeply. He hadn't realised that he'd been holding his breath.

He tossed his Sonic to River. "Pair our Sonics. If this is to work…"

* * *

Two minutes later, the Ship of the Silence came into view. Well, it was still several hundred light years away, but John's TARDIS managed to locate it.

"What's the plan?" Clara asked.

John looked up from the computer screen. "The GHOST Drive. The GHOST Drive has the power to do half-level Block Transfer Computations. Using the Doctor's current TARDIS key and the GHOST Drive, we can clone the Doctor's current TARDIS into mine, making its Time Trail and the Doctor's TARDIS' Time Trail the same. That's usually not possible but it'll work. We use that to enter the Time Lock and then break our way through into the ship. We use the residual signal of the Doctor's old Sonic Screwdriver from River's, to track his Sonic and thereby land exactly in front of him."

"Won't our coming in raise the alarm?"

"Which is why we'll be landing near him. George has been planning this ever since he picked us up. It took me this long to figure it out. Except now he's not here to carry the plan out. We are."

* * *

**Gallifrey.**

"What is the second use of the Time Extraction Chamber?"

George didn't respond, calculating extraction parameters on the v-board.

"Lord I-"

"Do NOT call me by that name."

"Why not?"

"Because this is Gallifrey. The root of this entire problem. This scheme is bigger than you think. You are lucky the Extraction Chamber is about 7 minutes from any camera or microphone. Rule 0: on Gallifrey, words have power."

"Ok then, **George.** What's up with the Time Extraction Chamber?"

"I'm plotting a flight path for my TARDIS. Now that the Children of Time have my plan, I need a new one. I use the Regeneration Extraction Chamber to select the Doctor's current regeneration, input it into the Time Extraction Chamber. I then input John's TARDIS key, which I've sourced from the Paternoster Gang. As soon as his TARDIS changes in this universe, which should be in a few minutes back where the Paternosters are in my TARDIS, they get it to me, now an exact clone copy of the Doctor's TARDIS key. I use it to create a straight portal through the Doctor's Confession Dial-absolutely not what it is intended for-and end up there. Yeah, that's about it. Except there's still the problem of entering a Time Lock, but I'll improvise. Any questions?"

"Yeah. Why're you doing so much work?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have the Time Lords at your behest, George. We are sort of bound by honour to prevent anything from happening to the Lord President and well…he is the Doctor. A war hero. I'm sure we'll get an almost unanimous vote in the High Council."

"No."

The General frowned. "That's what I don't get. We could dissipate the Time Lock from the outside in under seven minutes with the tools we have. It's quite easy, as opposed to dissipating a Time Lock from the inside, which is near impossible. Why not take our help?"

George smiled sadly. "I wish I could. But I have a very informed idea as to who is behind this entire scheme. And Gallifrey is the only tactical advantage we have. If I were to use Gallifreyan technology, the war would be lost before it started."

"The TEC and the REC are both Gallifreyan technology…" the General pointed out.

"Both of which I have in my TARDIS. Both of which I can find broken versions of in a clearance sale. And the fact is pretty well known across the universe."

"But what you need is a Time Correction…" the General guessed.

George nodded. "They know I have gone to Gallifrey. They don't know **when."**

* * *

**The Ship of the Silence, the Seventeenth Cluster, Mutter's Spiral.**

The Doctor didn't quite have time for a reunion with his companions. Hell broke loose as John's TARDIS landed silently. Somehow, the ship's systems detected the TARDIS and alarms began to blare. The TARDIS doors blew open and River and John rushed outside. John began scanning the Field Cell around the Doctor, while River's Sonic (now paired with John's) began to try the locking codes.

"No…no…" the Doctor muttered.

River smiled. "Don't worry, sweetie. We'll get you out."

Just as the field cell broke open, the alarms stopped.

The companions looked at each other. John stopped scanning for codes. "Uh, oh. That's not good."

"You're right. It's not good. For you."

They turned to see Madam Kovarian standing behind them, holding a gun upon an unconscious teenage girl. The girl seemed to be glowing with regeneration energy, so she was most definitely a Time Lord.

The Sonic dropped from John's hand.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked.

John didn't reply. He just stood, mouth hanging open with shock and recognition.

"John? Are you alright?"

John didn't reply, now at the verge of tears. A seemingly wordless breath escaped him, but Amy managed to make out what he was trying to say. "John, who's Susan?"

* * *

**P.S. I think I went a little too far with that one. But, meh!**


	23. Tis But A Battle

**Author's Note: It's been 12 months since I last updated. I have no excuses. I simply haven't had the peace of mind to write, and anything that I've tried to write has suffered. I wrote this chapter about 11 and a half months ago. What you see is a slightly edited version of that draft. This was originally going to be the second to last chapter (excluding the epilogue), but I have decided to make it the last. I hope to continue the story this series has started, but I honestly don't know how long it'll be before that happens. It could be a week, a month or a year. Maybe more. The epilogue's going to be next up. Sorry I started on such a solemn note. Please do enjoy!**

* * *

**The Ship of the Silence, the Seventeenth Cluster, Mutter's Spiral.**

Madam Kovarian led her little party of Silence and humans to the cells holding the Doctor and the Children of Time. "Isn't this the ultimate victory, Doctor? Having everyone you have ever cared for all in one room, at the mercy of the Church of the Silence. It seems Silence will fall after all, just later than prophesised."

The Doctor sneered. "You're all like that, aren't you? You've lost, you have no hope, blah blah blah. You think you have defeated me, bringing them here? Them being here strengthens me. You try to lay a hand on any of them and you will not live to see another day. I will hunt down every last one of you and make sure every last trace of you is erased from time. Remember, I have a TARDIS."

"And a bomb!" said a voice from above them. The roof suddenly blew up in a bright orange explosion, leaving a circular hole in the roof. Everyone looked up at it in confusion. The smoke cleared slowly, showing four silhouettes.

"Prepare to be decimated for the glory of the Sontaran Empire."

Four figures jumped down in between the two parties carrying alpha meson blasters.

"We actually meant for the explosion to be a little bigger. Budget cuts. What's up, Doc?"

The Doctor scowled. "Nothing much. Just caged you know."

"Does sarcasm help a lot? Always wondered."

"Wouldn't it be a great universe if it did?"

George turned around to the sudden power up of a couple of blasters. "You really should have brought a couple of those Daleks and Cybermen you have to this little prison of yours. Because you wouldn't want to point blasters at me when I have this!" He removed a small diamond from his pocket. "Do you recognize this? This is a **warp star**. One shot at anyone, and I detonate this warp star. The field prison cells holding my friends will protect them. My TARDIS has already left this ship and will home onto the signal of the Doctor's Sonic Sunglasses as soon as it detects the explosion. Plus, the worm I inserted into the Doctor's TARDIS…Oh wait…" He pointed his Sonic Screwdriver at a corner of the room. The worm in the Doctor's TARDIS let out an extremely high pitched whine, one that no one could hear, temporarily disorienting everyone in the room except those in the Field Cells and the tetrad that had just entered.

* * *

"What was that?" Madam Kovarian asked.

"That was a dormant emergency function of the TARDIS. To prevent the TARDIS falling into the wrong hands, the Time Lords included a couple of safety features in TARDISes right from Mark I. What you _heard_ was EF 2. It just hacked into your systems and provided me with all the access codes of your ship. You want me to go on? I can now blow both your ship, this warp star, and two TARDISes simultaneously. The resulting explosion will **reset** this and the three nearest universes. Right now I have more power than you're ever likely to see till the end of the universe. You have only one way out. Would you like to know what it is?"

Madam Kovarian laughed. "You think you can scare us?"

"I know I can." George pointed his Sonic into the air. The PA system activated with a static noise. "The ship will Self-Destruct in T minus 2 minutes."

"You're going to have to better than that."

"Self-destruct in T minus 10 seconds.

9.

8.

7.

6.

5."

"Stop!"

"Self-destruct paused."

* * *

Madam Kovarian smiled. "That was your biggest mistake."

A blue Dalek bolt came from the blue, hitting George right in the gut. It was George's turn to smile. "That was **your** biggest mistake." Without warning George began to glow with a bright golden light. He focused a bulk of his energy at the door over the Daleks, collapsing that archway. "Never try and fight a genetically mutated Time Lord. And before anyone says it, no that doesn't make me one of the X-men. Universes don't crossover like that in reality." He then turned back to Madam Kovarian. "Your move. You can leave. Or you lose. No in-betweens."

Just about then Susan woke up. She looked around groggily. "Grandfather, what's going on?"

"We're being rescued, Susan, albeit terribly, by a Time Lord named George. Never understood that alias."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. I'm just as lost as you."

* * *

Madam Kovarian sneered, now solely focused on George. "Why not just destroy us, like you claim to be able to?"

"Oh, believe me, I quite want to blow your ship to bits. I just don't think it'd rest well with the Doctor over there."

"So you're offering us a way out. How do we leave, then?"

"Do you think I'm stupid? You're flying an asteroid ship in a potentially destructive asteroid belt, and you don't have an escape teleport?"

"How are you so confident you've won?"

"I just am."

Madam Kovarian sneered. "You think you're smart, Time Lord? We knew you would come after us. We're ready to fight back. We don't need the Daleks or Cybermen to help us."

"Except, I hold the key to your destruction. You, Madam Kovarian, are going to switch on the ship's internal emergency system. I could do it too, but I want to humiliate the Silence. You're going to activate your teleports, run away, or get into escape pods. Or any combination or permutation of those. Whichever they find easier. **Or**… I blow this ship to smithereens."

"I still believe you're bluffing. You're going to have to convince me otherwise."

"Oh? You do?" George pointed his Sonic at the computer. Two seconds later, it beeped. "Compartment 56 depressurising. Estimated death toll: 152 individuals."

George spread his arms out. "There! I just killed 152 people. Your entire ship is only 4 and a half times that amount. Not that much bigger. Well, now it's 3 and a half. You might be the next one to go. Should I go on?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "You shouldn't have done that George."

"I already did, no way to reverse it. Now, Madam Kovarian, what are you going to do? I've already switched on the PA system, so go ahead."

Madam Kovarian tried her best to hide a smile and walked over to the computer and opened the command module. "Everybody, we shall be activating the Emergency protocols. You will be teleported off world to the nearest planet." She typed in some code and looked back to George, a sneer now on her face. "This does not mean you've won, Time Lord."

"It does for now. I've won this battle. I saw that smile. Pray that you will be able to keep that for longer. Tell your **Patron** to watch out."

"Oh, you **have** won this battle. But 'tis but a battle. Do you have what it takes to win the war?"

George scowled and pointed the Sonic at the computer. Every single soldier in the room was teleported, with teleports of all the other species in the ship activating, now that the Church had nothing to hold them.

Susan looked around at the now empty room. "Was that it?"

George laughed darkly. "When you have a Time Lord misusing his powers effectively, most rescues are by Deus Ex Machina."

* * *

Now that all their enemies were gone, George deactivated the field cells. There were hugs all around and only a few rapid heartbeats. Like the Doctor had once said, an anti-climax once in a while was good for the heart(s).

"You really shouldn't have done that. And getting me to break into a Time-Lock to break out my past self? Reckless as usual. You know how hard it is to play myself from a hundred or so years ago?"

George chuckled. "Oh, those 152 people? I just hacked into the command module and made it play the voice file for that. Because it's the 5000s and they still have voice files. I didn't actually depressurise a compartment. If Kovarian had spent a second and thought about it, she'd have realised Compartment 56 was a storage compartment. Plus, getting you to play yourself is the entire reason their plan didn't succeed."

"And EF 2? Did you use the Time Correction to get the codes? Gallifrey was honour-bound to help me, so it would make sense."

"But Gallifrey's gone…" Rose said, confused.

The Doctor smiled sheepishly. "About that…I saved Gallifrey…1000 years ago by my timeline-for those who don't know, I'm just about 2300 years old. And then I promptly lost it, and couldn't find it. Until recently. At the end of the universe, give or take a star system."

Clara frowned. "You said you didn't know if you had."

"I'm from your future, um…Clara. Interesting…"

"What is?"

"My memories are returning. Uh, I'm from the future. I'm not the Doctor that was originally captured. We sort of switched places without being noticed as the Time Stop collapsed, when Missy and Irving visited me. Made his scheme a lot easier."

George looked at the Doctor incredulously. "Irving?! You haven't called me that ever in the near about 3000 years that I've lived. I told you never to call me that, Theta!"

"Don't you get bored of being called Brax all the time? Makes no sense, anyway. What sort of a name is Irving Braxiatel? Did you really choose that name at the ceremony?"

"What sort of a name is 'the Doctor'. Who puts a 'the' in their name, in the first place? Besides, 'the Doctor' is a translation. You and I both know what it means in Old High Gallifreyan. As do River and John, for that matter." River and John looked away, embarrassed.

Donna was the first to speak up. "Doctor, who is he? He acts like he's known you for centuries, yet you've never mentioned him once."

"Of course I haven't! Of the 2300 or so years I've lived, he's barely been around. Bloody deadbeat. Suppose it's time, though. This is Irving Braxiatel, my elder brother."

* * *

**P.S. Not sure how that turned out. Hope it's good enough. Thank you for reading and please do review. I hope to get the epilogue up soon...**


End file.
